


The Weight of Silence

by twinyards



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: AU, Angst, M/M, Modern AU, i literally hate myself for writing this so i'm sorry in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-08-11 06:05:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16470170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinyards/pseuds/twinyards
Summary: When the world is overcome by a deadly virus that threatens the population, young aspiring doctor, Thomas, is one of the first to volunteer for a research team searching for the cure. What starts as a humanitarian imperative soon morphs into race against time when Thomas meets Newt, a college student diagnosed with the Flare who's volunteered to participate in clinical trials. Their bond grows stronger as time runs out, and the ultimate question must be answered: Can Thomas make Newt the first person to survive the Flare?





	1. The First

**Day One : Thomas**

If there was one thing Thomas knew about life, it was that it was a cruel and unfair thing, but it was balanced. Nature was a peculiar mistress. It would lob every challenge your way, build a wall around you thirty feet high, but leave you an old and fraying rope to pull yourself out. The solutions it offered you were often even more difficult to stomach than the original problem granted toward you, but they existed. 

Balance. Thomas believed in balance.

Thomas was a perfect example of his own theory. He was an orphan, raised in foster care and relinquished to the world at age 18 with little more than the clothes on his back. He’d never known his parents, had never fit in very well anywhere. People liked him well enough, but never enough to keep him. So he’d spend a year in one place before moving on. He’d learned early in life that the only person he could rely on was himself. 

Balance had given him brains. His above-average IQ and quick feet had picked up the slack for the opportunities he lacked. Straight A’s and a top spot on his high school track team had given him a free ride to college. 

Thomas was only 19, but he was already through with his bachelor’s degree and working on his master’s, interning at the medical clinic on campus in Disease Research and Management. He was going to be a doctor.  That seemed balance enough for the childhood he lacked.

But this - this was something Thomas couldn’t fathom.

He’d been staring at the blood sample in his slide for what felt like hours, watching the diseased pathogens spread like wildfire until every platelet and cell was coated in a slick of dark, as if black oil had coated it and refused to be removed. The blood sample had been clean when he’d placed it on the slide. Fifteen minutes after Thomas had introduced the pathogen, everything was destroyed. 

The end of the world had begun with a flare. A seemingly freak incident - a flash of light that spanned the globe. Four seconds of near blinding white, and then nothing. Scientists had called it a freak astrological event. Conspiracy theorists had called it a sign of impending doom. 

Neither of them had been wrong. 

There was a problem with the Earth's atmosphere. That's what governments and agencies would tell the world later. Something had faltered, wavered, and let in too much of the sun’s powerful rays. It was harmless, so long as the world started taking the proper precautions. 

What came later was a sickness. One the world couldn't begin to understand. It started with fatigue, with the veins in one's hands going dark as tar. And then it became violent. Those who had been exposed lost all sense of humanity. As their brains began to decay, so did their self control. They were close to zombies; attacking anyone in their path until finally the virus ate them away to nothing. 

You were smiling, and then you were sick, and then you were dead.

It became known as the Flare. 

And Thomas was determined to cure it.

The only issue standing in his way was this - Thomas had been working with the United States’s leading scientists for months, and they’d discovered nothing. Logic told him there was a good chance the Flare was incurable. Something inside of him insisted there had to be a way.

_ Nature is about balance. There has to be a cure _ . Thomas couldn’t count the number of times he’d repeated those words in his head. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d repeated them to hopeful faces, staring at him through heavily lidded eyes with tubes emerging from their skin. 

There was a tally in his notebook. One he told no one about. Not Dr. Paige, his mentor, or Teresa, his research partner and best friend. They’d only worry about him if they knew the obsession with which he kept score of the battle he was waging against the Flare. A battle he was losing sixty-four to zero.

Sixty-four people had died while under his care. Sixty-four people had looked at him with hope and longing and belief, and he’d failed all of them. Thomas didn’t know how to express the heavy weight that rested on his shoulders from all of those lives lost. 

“Thomas?”

Thomas lifted his head and turned towards the entrance to the lab. Teresa was hovering in the doorway, looking like she might have been there for awhile. Her black hair was tied in a knot at the back of her head, making her features look more severe and serious than he was used to. She looked more haggard than usual, like she hadn’t slept in days. Thomas wouldn’t have been surprised if that was the case.

It was coming up on the one year anniversary of her mother’s death, and Thomas knew that memories often kept Teresa awake at night. Thomas was here in the lab, studying the Flare, by chance. He was here because he’d been curious. Teresa was here because the Flare had taken something from her personally. Her mother had been one of the first confirmed fatalities. 

His chest hurt to think she’d been in this lab, day in and day out, for eleven months with no results. They’d grown close in their search for a cure, forged a friendship that felt like it was meant to last, like it had been there from the very start. Looking at her now, with her skin so pale he could trace the veins across her temples with his eyes, Thomas could feel the weight of the pain on her chest. And he hated that he could do nothing to take it away.

No. He  _ could _ do something. And he was doing it. Progress was slow, but they would find a cure. They would. They had to. 

“Yes?”

Teresa furrowed her brows, like she could hear the sympathy in his voice and wanted to slap him for it. “We have a volunteer. No symptoms yet.” 

Thomas’s brows rose in surprise. Most of the patients they got were well on their way out of this world and on to the next by the time they landed in the patients ward. Most patients didn’t volunteer to be a guinea pig until they were three inches shy of the grave. A patient without symptoms was - well it was unheard of. Thomas didn’t think he’d ever come across anyone with the Flare who’d caught it and volunteered early enough to give themselves much of a chance. 

“He’s in exam room A5. Can you get his blood samples and get him settled?”

Thomas response was automatic. “Of course.”

He didn’t ask Teresa why she couldn’t do it. Looking at her told him enough. Thomas didn’t think she had enough strength left in her to watch another person fade away when they’d come to her seeming perfectly healthy. She didn’t take on patients. Teresa confined herself to the lab.

She let out a relieved sigh and offered him a weak smile. “Thank you,” she said, disappearing through the doorway and back to whichever lab she’d sequestered herself to today. Thomas made a mental note to force her out of the lab tonight for coffee or dinner. Anything that would make her breathe real air. He had a bad feeling she’d been sleeping in the on-call rooms again instead of going home. 

After putting away his most recent slide and washing his hands with mechanical movements, Thomas gathered his lab coat and set off down the hall. He passed several closed-off labs, and doctors and interns who smiled at him with too-cheery expressions and jovial eyes, before entering the patient wing. Exam room A5 already had a note plastered the door. 

**Room in quarantine. Immunes only beyond this point** .

Thomas thought again of his theory of balance. The world was cruel and dangerous and despicable, but Thomas had always been a perfect example of his own theory. His immunity to the deadliest plague known to humankind confirmed as much. 

Shrugging into his coat, Thomas grabbed the patient chart from the cubby next to the door, and entered.

Patient quarters had always given him a feeling of unease. All the white walls and white cabinets and white beds and white bathrooms with the white fluorescent lights made him feel like all the life was being bleached away. They reminded him of the flare that had unleashed this plague on the world. It was a correlation he loathed. Most days, he entered patients quarters and steeled his heart for the overpowering sense of dread and oncoming death that often threatened to consume him

Today, the feeling was different. 

The boy sitting up on the bed looked about Thomas’s age, maybe a bit older, but he had an aura of youth about him. Perhaps it was the childish gleam in his eyes, or the figity way his legs swung out and struck the padded bottoms of his bed. Perhaps it was the corn yellow of his hair or the chocolate brown of his eyes or just the way he looked unconcerned with his own fate. But something about him put Thomas instantly at ease. The boy reminded him of days wandering through tall grass in search of insects to inspect and nights under the stars dreaming of being in space. He reminded Thomas of childhood, albeit the one Thomas had never really experienced. 

The boy looked up, a curious look blooming across his face. He was still in civilian clothes - yet to be given over to the scrubs of a patient. He wore a blue and white baseball t-shirt and faded blue jeans, both items obviously well loved from the frays at their edges. “Say mate, I know I volunteered and all, but how’s about we add some color to this room? It’s bloody depressing in here.”

Thomas managed to choke back a laugh, containing it to a slight chuckle as he pulled a stool to the edge of the boy’s bed. “I’ll see what we can do about that for you…” Thomas trailed off, glancing down at the boy’s chart until he found his name. “Newton.”

Newton flinched. “Just Newt,” he amended. “My parents named me after some dead scientist. I don’t much like havin’ a name that ain’t just mine. So just Newt.”

A small smile captured Thomas’s face before he could force it back. The ladies at the orphanage had a habit of naming the newborns after famous figureheads as well, and Thomas’s own namesake came from a scientist as well. He figured Newt had drawn the short straw, though, since Thomas hadn’t landed himself with a name like  _ Edison _ . 

Stealing his smile, Thomas pressed forward. “Alright, just Newt,” Newt gave him a dirty look for that one, but there was a hint of smile behind it, “I need to run through a series of questions with you, and then take some blood, and afterwards we can get you settled. Alright?”

Newt gave him a long once over. “Aren’t you a bit young to be doctoring me?”

Thomas frowned. He wasn’t used to people caring enough to recognize that he was this young. “I’m an intern, but there aren’t many people who can safely enter your room, so you’ll be working primarily with me throughout your stay here.” He tried not to flinch at his phrasing. Thomas hadn’t meant to make it sound like Newt was at a sleepaway camp and not a center of disease control, but the damage was already done. 

Nostrils flaring, Newt asked, “So, I’m quarantined then?” Thomas nodded. “Do I get to know your name at least? Because if you’re going to be my new best buddy, we’d best be on a first name basis.”

“Thomas.”

“Right then, Thomas. Let’s get to your questions.” 

They ran through a series of simple questions for a half hour. Where Newt was born, his blood type, where he thought he might have contracted the virus, before coming to Thomas’s least favorite question on the list. Newt had been in light spirits the whole time. His voice had stayed pleasant and amicable, his answers given with ease. For someone who knew they were dying, he seemed remarkably content. Thomas wondered how much was an act, and how much was acceptance. Newt seemed far too young to simply be content to die.

Thomas cleared his throat, gritting his teeth against his discomfort. “Have you - have you been in contact with anyone within the past twenty-four hours to whom you could have passed the virus?”

Newt stiffened for a fleeting moment, but his calm expression didn’t falter. “My sister, Lizzy. But I didn’t make it home last night, so I’m not sure if she fits inside the twenty-four hour mark.” Newt smiled almost wistfully, his gaze far away. “Our dad died a long time ago, and it’s just been the two of us. I was out with a friend last night, and I was supposed to meet her at home today after my appointment.

“It’s a bit weird, actually. I was going in for a physical, just your standard thing so I could go for track with my best mate. He’s the captain at our university. I broke my leg a couple years back, haven’t been able to race the same since. But I got this weird feeling, like I needed to go and see if things had changed. 

“But my leg ain’t any better. I should have known with the limp. And then they took my blood, and I could tell something was wrong. The doctors, they were afraid to let anyone close to me. And then someone told me I’d got the Flare, and I knew the University had a research wing for it, so I just told them to bring me here. Figured it was better to help as much as I could, in case Lizzy ever got sick. Maybe I could help her before I really needed to.”

Thomas swallowed thickly. Newt said everything in the distant way of someone who hadn’t quite grasped the severity of their situation. It pained him to think that soon the golden haired boy’s composure might crack and break. He meant to say something, about how Newt was brave to protect his sister, but he couldn’t find the words. He was too lost in admiring Newt’s strength, in appreciating and hating the sacrifice the smiling boy was making. 

“Can I ask you a question then, if you’re done?”

“Sure.” Thomas answered, making a few notes in Newt’s chart to request something a little more human for this room. He thought Newt was probably right, and this room was too depressing. And he couldn’t imagine that sadness fought the plague very well at all. “What’s the question?”

"What's the mortality rate?"

Thomas's head snapped up. Newt was looking at him so calmly, like the question wasn't riddled with weighted dread. Thomas didn't want to break that composure. He didn't want to see the blond boy’s face fall. Already he felt a strange protectiveness over Newt - like he wanted to shelter him from as much hurt as he possibly could. 

"Newt - I'm not sure you want me to answer that."

Newt shook his head, still smiling brightly. "Come on now, Tommy. I'm a big boy. I'd like to know my odds."

For a moment, Thomas was struck dumb by the use of  _ Tommy _ . Everyone called him Thomas, except Teresa, who called him Tom, but he liked the way Tommy sounded in Newt’s mouth. It made it sound like they were already fast friends, the way Newt had said they’d be. It was that feeling that spurred him into blind honesty. 

"One hundred percent."

"What?"

"The mortality rate. It's one hundred percent. Every case of the Flare on record has resulted in death. Timing is different for everyone - sometimes it's a few days, sometimes a few weeks. But they all die."

For a fraction of a moment, Newt's composure slipped. There was something like fear in his eyes, and Thomas felt guilty for having answered the question. He might be a doctor, or almost one, anyways, and he might have wanted to be honest with Newt, but that protective streak in him told Thomas he’d made a mistake. 

But then Newt only nodded. He settled back against his bed, and held out his arm for Thomas to draw blood. "Right then. We best get started. Lots of work to do."

Thomas stared at him, perplexed. "You're not scared?"

Newt smiled at him again, that broad grin that took over his whole face and made him look younger than he was. Thomas felt privileged to have earned that smile. It felt rare and important. He didn't think anyone had ever smiled at him like that. 

"No, Tommy. I'm not bloody scared. And do you know why?" 

"Why?"

They shared a conspiratorial look. Thomas felt like the apprentice to a criminal mastermind. He felt like they were sharing the kind of secret that changed the world. He felt like he’d known Newt for his whole life, but also like he’d known him for an hour. It was such a strange thing, to feel seen and known by someone who’d only known your name for a brief moment. 

"Because you're going to make me the first."

-

Leaving Newt behind in his room felt like finding an oasis in the desert and leaving it behind to aimlessly wander the scorching sands. There was something very  _ wrong _ about the act. It was a strange thing to Thomas - to feel tethered to a room he knew, logically, no healthy human belonged in. His immunity aside, Thomas wasn’t going to find a cure by sitting at Newt’s bedside and sharing small talk about Newt’s sister and his desire to race again on the track team with his best friend, Minho.

It was quite a peculiar thing, Thomas’s new desire to simply  _ talk _ . He talked to Teresa often. After all, they saw each other every day, but aside from their friendship, he was so very often alone. Most of the time, Thomas didn’t mind. In his relatively short life, he’d grown accustomed to the idea that friendships were fleeting. 

People came, and then they went. They were like seasons, dazzling you for a brief moment before they took their leave and something, or someone, else took their place. 

And for Thomas, that was okay. He liked that the world and its people were always shifting and evolving around him. He’d never been fond of standing still. Curiosity was a living thing under his skin, and it yearned for something new, always. 

He’d never found anyone who captured his attention for long. Anyone to whom he felt a pull. Rather, it seemed people were often pulled to Thomas before they realized he was more interested in discovering the world than leading others through it. When he wanted to be, he was a natural leader. He knew what to say and when to say it, enough to encourage and enough to inspire, but he held back enough to still be seen as human. People looked up to him, but Thomas had found he didn’t particularly like being looked up to. 

Teresa was a peculiar outlier. She did not look up to him, though he knew she respected him. On rare occasions, she would lean on him, and vice versa, but their friendship seemed to exist largely through their mutual desire for something more. For a better world. For a world without the Flare. They’d formed a bond  _ around _ that shared desire, but it hadn’t begun with a spark of kinship. It had taken time, and still sometimes Thomas felt it put a strain on him.

Newt felt nothing like that.

Connection to Newt felt like it had occurred instantaneously. From the moment Thomas had looked at the other boy and seen a spark of that childlike awe and faith - that somehow wasn’t childish but still reminded him of the simplicity of youth- he’d felt a tug. And then Newt had opened his mouth. Had been so honest and a little brazen and filled with certainty in a cure, probably out of spite at the universe, that Thomas admired him instantly. It was the first time Thomas had ever felt a pull towards someone else, rather than someone being pulled towards him. He was a man of science, of nature and its laws and checks and balances, so he didn’t believe in fate. He did not believe his path had been planned for him. He did not believe things happened because they were spurred on by some supernatural force.

And yet, something inside of him insisted that he and Newt were meant to meet. It was a stupid feeling, one he tried to stuff down into the depths of his person as he exited exam room A5 and tucked Newt’s chart into its cubby, before setting off for the lab with the blood samples he’d collected. 

People didn’t just meet and become best friends in the same day. They were both playing a role, acting out a careful script, so Newt could maintain composure as long as he could. Yes, that certainly made more sense. He would play the role, Thomas decided, and he would play it well. 

Playing a role didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it.

He found Teresa in the main lab, head ducked over a microscope in tense concentration. He cleared his throat before entering, so as not to startle her. She jumped anyway, clearly expecting the room to be empty, whipping around and relaxing visibly when her eyes fell on Thomas.

“Tom,” she breathed, “I thought you’d gone home.”

For a tense moment, Thomas just stared at her, thoroughly perplexed. “I was in A5, with New- with the new volunteer.” He caught himself at the last possible moment.

Teresa’s eyes widened, and she flicked her glance up to the clock on the wall up and behind his head. “You were in there for hours,” she said. “Everyone else went home an hour ago.” And then her eyes seemed to blaze to light, a level of tension leaving her body for a moment as an idea flared to life. “Is there something special about him? Have you learned something?”

Flinching back, Thomas shook his head. Even if he wasn’t looking at Teresa, he knew what he’d see: that bright spark leaving her eyes once again dull and glassy, the weight of the world settling on her shoulders once more. His chest ached in sympathy, for not being able to give her the peace and reassurance she so desperately craved. 

“I’m sorry,” he told her, meaning every word of it. Putting the blood samples into storage to review in the morning, he reached for something that might help him pull his friend from her sinking thoughts. He caught on an idea, one that broke a little light in his chest. One that would take out two birds with one stone. “Will you help me with something?”

She furrowed her brows, but after a moment’s hesitation, Teresa nodded. “Anything,” she said. 


	2. The Second

**Day Two: Newt**

The first night felt like a death sentence. 

After Thomas had gone, and Newt was left alone, the severity of his circumstances had crashed over him in a wave of grief so strong it threatened to drown him. He was sick. He was going to lose his mind. He was going to die. 

The weight of the truth was a sack of bricks tied with a noose around his neck. Newt was feigning composure to conserve his dignity, but his heart was in tatters. Shredded. Aching. He missed Lizzy. He wanted to talk to Minho. He wanted his shuck leg to stop throbbing. He wanted to run. He wanted to stop imagining that he could feel the virus spreading like a parasite beneath his skin. 

He told himself he had to be brave, had to stay chipper and optimistic for anyone who came to see him. Someone would call Lizzy for him. The news would come better from someone else, he thought. Newt wasn’t sure he could keep his mask in place if he had to hear her cry. He was the big brother. He was supposed to protect her. And the best way he could do that was to stay far away. Maybe he could ask Thomas to call her. Or he could call Minho and have him break the news.

None of it seemed fair. Handing off the burden of his inevitable fatality was a cruel punishment for the messenger, but Newt could hardly bring himself to care. He had such little time left. He wasn’t going to spend it sulking in guilt. 

With the room empty of Thomas’s questions and small talk, however, his resolve had begun to waiver. He’d had such grand ideals. What a saint he was, volunteering his body and his finals hours to the search for a cure. They’d write lovely things in his obituary. It had all seemed very awe-inspiring and selfless. Now Newt wasn’t so sure.

Being a hero, making a sacrifice, it was the kind of thing you wanted until you had it. Once the opportunity arose, you were just fucking scared. 

The night passed with the weight of silence growing by the hour. His room never really became dark. Light from the hall reflected off the white of every available surface, his blue scrubs the only item in the room that didn’t feel like it was meant to leech the hope from his bones. The scratchy hospital blankets and constant beeping of machines were unwelcome companions. He’d never been quite so lonely. 

He wanted Thomas to come back. He wanted to talk about anything but being sick. Thomas had a strange effect on him; his presence a light sedative to sooth his singing nerves and caring heart. 

Somewhere past 1am, the tears came. They cascaded down his cheeks in silent streams of misery, burning his eyes and darkening his mind until he finally managed to pass into a restless slumber. 

-

Newt awoke when the door to his room opened with a hiss, the seal meant to keep his diseased breath trapped in his four walled prison breaking as someone entered. Groggily, Newt opened his eyes. When the room came into focus and the bloody awful fluorescent lights stopped blinding him, his gaze found Thomas, pulling out his stool and perching beside Newt’s bed. 

“I come bearing gifts.”

He was ridiculously happy to see the dark haired boy, and happier still when Thomas tossed a takeout container onto his bed. The smell of fried potatoes wafted up his nose, and Newt let out an audible groan of approval. Thomas flushed, and Newt allowed himself a private smile at the effect he seemed to have on the intern, before digging into his food.

His eyes attached to a duffle at Thomas’s feet when he’d finished. It was a tattered thing, obviously aged and put to good use. If he squinted, Newt thought he might have been able to make out a track logo on it. “What’s that?”

Thomas offered him a sheepish smile. “Some stuff to make this room a little less depressing, like you asked.” Something fluttered in Newt’s stomach. He hadn’t expected Thomas to actually act on his throwaway comment. “Before you get excited, I couldn’t actually bring that much. But it’s a start.”

Unceremoniously, Thomas dumped the bag’s contents into Newt’s lap. Newt dug through them with vigor. He pulled aside a few warm, fleece blankets, silently running his hands over them in approval. Underneath the fabric lay an assortment of 3D puzzles and books. Though he was curious to see how quickly he might be able to solve some of the puzzles Thomas had gifted him, his attention fell instead to the books. Specifically, their cracked spines and soft edged pages. 

The were an odd assortment of genres. He spotted a few titles from Stephen King, before drifting to a copy of  _ All Quiet on the Western Front _ , and then onto  _ Lord of the Flies _ . There was an omnibus from Albert Camus, and the most tattered of all the others, a hardcover copy of  _ Walden. _

“These were yours?” He asked Thomas, finding himself reaching out to touch their covers gently. 

Thomas nodded. “Aside from the Stephen King stuff, I read most of them for classes, but they’re all good. I’m sorry there aren’t more. I spend too much time in the lab to have much time to read, and I didn’t think you’d want biology and medical textbooks.” Newt felt Thomas watching him as he picked up the copy of  _ Walden _ . He knew the author, Thoreau, but not the text. “That one is my favorite.”

Newt flipped it open to one of the many dogeared pages, eyes flitting to yellow highlight across what must have been one of Thomas’s favorite quotes. “‘As if you could kill time without injuring eternity,’” he read aloud, liking the way the words fit in his mouth. 

The books were such a simple gift, one Newt was sure Thomas had selected with barely a thought. But they felt special, in a strange way. They were strangers, Newt and Thomas, after all, but Newt had the feeling that he could scratch away a bit of the surface of who Thomas was with every page he turned. He had the strangest inkling that he was holding Thomas’s past in his hands, and simultaneously gazing into his future. He knew what Thomas had looked like at 10, and what he would look like at 80, but in the fleeting way one sees a mirage, not sure if it’s truly there or simply a figment of their imagination. 

He tucked the novel beneath his elbow and turned to Thomas with a soft smile. 

“Thank you, Tommy.”

Thomas flushed again. Newt rather liked that Thomas was embarrassed by the gratitude. He liked that Thomas was smart but humble. Newt liked that he never felt like Thomas was putting on a mask to talk to him. Nothing felt false or forced or awkward. They were just friends, as easily as oxygen filled their lungs.

There was something to be said about that, Newt thought, though he didn’t know what it was. Instead, he decided to simply be grateful. Yes, he was sick, Yes, he was dying. But he wasn’t going to be alone.

Newt wasn’t sure how he was so certain. He’d spent less than twenty-four hours in Thomas’s company, but he was confident the younger boy would be there, every day, unless Newt asked him not to be. There was a comfort in that that Newt wasn’t positive he knew how to describe. 

They talked as they ran through the days tests, measuring the disease’s spread through his blood, checking for stiffness in his joints, for gaps in his memory. Newt felt fine, but he tensed with apprehension every time Thomas examined something new. The tension would only ease when Thomas smiled or nodded in approval. Thomas never read the results out loud. Newt got the impression the other boy left his body language open for Newt to read on his own accord, to take or leave as he wished. Newt was grateful for that small kindness, too.

He was curious as well, why there never seemed to be any other doctors in his room. Newt didn’t really want anyone else there, intruding on him, silent and refusing to help distract him from his grief, but something was nagging at him. The airtight seal of the door to his room. Thomas’s initial comment that few people could enter his room safely. The heaviness of his certainty settled over him.

“You can’t get sick, can you?”

Thomas went rigid at his words, every muscle locking into place. When he lifted his head, his expression was wracked with guilt. His mouth opened and closed again, floundering for an explanation they both knew Thomas was dreading to give. Newt thought it might have been the first time Thomas had been at a loss for words. 

Newt offered him a small, rueful smile. “It’s alright, mate. You can say it.”

“I’m immune,” Thomas choked, nodding shamefully. 

Newt nodded once in response. Thomas was watching him mournfully. Only Newt wasn’t angry, the way Thomas no doubt expected him to be. Newt was far from angry. In a strange way he was relieved, to know that not everyone could get the Flare. Maybe Lizzy would be immune. Maybe she wouldn’t ever get sick. Though it was a long shot, it brought Newt a small bit of relief. 

He thought maybe he should have been angry that there were people out there who would never suffer the way he was about to, and he wasn’t one of them. Instead, he found himself strangely happy for Thomas. Though, the more he thought on it, the more Newt realized he didn’t really know why. 

“It isn’t fair,” Thomas said mournfully. 

Smiling sadly, Newt met his new friend’s gaze. “No, no it’s not. Is it rare, to be immune?”

Thomas thought on that for a moment. “Less than it used to be, I think. We have a few other interns here who are. The younger a subject is, the more likely they seem to develop an immunity. I think there are four of us here, in all, but Teresa is really the only one I’m close to.”

There was hitch in Thomas’s words when he spoke, centered around the girl’s name. “Is Teresa your girlfriend?”

A loud snort of surprise burst from Thomas’s mouth, startling them both. His eyes widened hugely, but they were alight with amusement. “Oh, no,” Thomas explained. “Teresa is… Well, she’s my best friend. My only friend, really.”

Newt frowned at that. He was perplexed by the idea of Thomas not having friends. It made sense, from what Thomas had told him about the amount of time the other boy spent in the lab, but it left a pit in Newt’s stomach to think of the life Thomas was missing. 

Thomas was full of life, beneath the surface. Anyone could see if in his face, if they payed attention. His mind was always alight with curiosity, spinning and spinning as it tried to solve the world's problems. He had a habit of shaking his leg or tapping his fingers on his knee, as if he hated holding still. And Newt had picked up on the fact that Thomas always sat with his back to a corner of the room, so he could observe everything. When Thomas spoke, it was never just to be heard. He had important things to say. There was never a moment where Thomas opened his mouth and Newt wasn’t keen to listen. 

An idea had begun to form in Newt’s mind. It was selfish, and yet it wasn’t. Morally and ethically, Newt thought it might have fallen on a bit of a gray area, but he was determined to follow through on it anyways. He’d mulled it over for a few long moments, and the potential good outcomes thoroughly outweighed the bad. 

“Have they called her yet?” Newt asked, changing the subject despite Thomas’s confusion. “My sister?” 

“Not yet. Legally, you have to sign a release before we can notify anyone of your medical state.”

Newt nodded. That made sense, though it was mildly irritating that no one had told him about this when he’d gone and gotten himself into this mess. “Do you have it? The release?”

Thomas eyed him cautiously, but pulled out the form all the same. He pointed at where Newt would need to sign, before gesturing to another line. “Here’s where you indicate who the release is given to. You can write in the clinic, and then someone can call Lizz- I mean, your sister.”

He took the pen Thomas offered, scribbling his signature before signing Thomas’s name in the release section. 

Thomas’s eyes widened as Newt handed the form back. “Newt - I don’t - I mean, are you sure about that? It’s not exactly appropriate.”

“I don’t want some stranger who’s never even seen my face calling my little sister to tell her I’m going to die. I’m all she’s got.” Newt let his expression harden just a little, let Thomas see the severity of the situation, what it would mean for Lizzy to hear this from just anyone. “You could - you could call Minho. Tell him I asked you to have him break the news to her. They’re close. It might be better. Than from a stranger.”

Thomas shook his head, eyes filled with remorse. “I can - I can do that. He um - he goes to the University?”

Newt nodded. “You might know him.”

“Why would I know him?”

Newt smiled, then gestured to the tattered duffle resting on the floor between them. “You’re a runner.”

Thomas smiled slightly. “Not for awhile. Seems there’s always something else of greater importance, doesn’t it?”

His words struck Newt like a blow. Not just because Newt understood them, but because he could feel the weight the other boy put on himself. Thomas had spoken with an aura of whimsy to his voice, like running had once given him great happiness. It felt like a loss. 

And Newt understood loss. Breaking his leg had changed everything for him. Before he’d shattered his femur, running had been the Newt’s outlet. And not just for anger or grief. He truly loved it - his feet pounding against the pavement, the slight blur at the edge of his vision when he pushed himself faster, the steady burn in his thighs; everything about brought him to life. And he’d been good at it. 

Looking at Thomas now, Newt was almost angry at the other boy for giving that all up. And yet, he couldn’t be. Because Thomas had given up something he’d loved, Newt knew he’d loved it - he just did, in service of something bigger than himself. Thomas was searching for a better world. Newt didn’t know if he would have had the strength to be that selfless.

Thomas was a marvel of a human being, a study in kindness and an exhibition in selfless acts of heroism gone unnoticed. Newt had a sudden picture in his mind, an idea that Thomas had been the little boy who gave away his food at lunch to the other children that didn’t have their own. He imagined Thomas in high school, volunteering to tutor with nothing to gain but the knowledge that he’d helped someone who needed it. It was such a vivid image, Newt thought it a memory rather than an ideal of his own invention. 

The Thomas he envisioned in his mind belonged to him in a strange, melancholy sort of way. Connection between them was undeniable, their easy friendship the kind of thing he’d only read about in books. Newt wanted to rewind time and find a way for them to meet sooner. For Thomas to meet Minho and Lizzy. He wanted more time. Fate was such a cruel thing, to give him a person like Thomas only when he was going to die.

“Will you find him, Tommy?” Newt asked, shoving thoughts of Thomas belonging to him in any way to the back of his mind, and tucking his legs beneath him to sit criss cross on the lumpy hospital bed they’d provided for him. His home until the end. Thomas lifted an uncertain, wary face to meet Newt’s intense, pleading stare. “It can’t be a stranger. Not for this. Can you do that for me?”

Thomas chewed on his lip, thinking for a long stretch of time Newt didn't dare to interrupt. He knew what he was asking. And he knew the unfair weight of it. He’d pleaded enough. The decision lied with Tommy, and Newt would not push any further, whatever he decided.

Finally, Thomas nodded. “I’ll find him,” He murmured, looking thoughtful. Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, let out a long breath, and when he opened them, Newt found an edge of humor, albeit a bit forced, edging into the other boy’s eyes. “But you have to do something for me in return.”

“Anything.”

The word fell from his mouth easily, and Newt realized with burning clarity that it held a far more significant weight than Thomas was likely to realize. Held a promise neither of them were prepared to understand or bring to light, so Newt shoved the realization down, down, down, hoping it might curl in the dark and be forgotten.

Thomas smiled, that little half smile that didn’t meet his eyes, and said, “Try not to do anything stupid until I get back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really hope y'all are enjoying this! There will be alternating POVs between the two, and I hope everyone's looking forward to some other characters beginning to make their appearance!


	3. The Third

**Day Three: Newt**

Thomas left them after Newt finally calmed, with a promise to return in an hour. That was all he could give them, before someone would ask questions. Teresa was already risking enough trying to cover for them, and as much as Newt adored Thomas for bringing Minho here, he didn’t want the boy to lose his job. 

For the first few minutes, Newt and Minho sat together in silence. There was a strangeness between them now, a void that Newt didn’t know how to breach. What Minho had seen was only the beginning of what was to come. Newt would grow far worse as the time wore on. 

But he didn’t think his outburst of sickened paranoia was what kept his friend so silent. Rather, Newt thought, it was Minho’s ability to be in the room at all. To sit by Newt’s side without fear. He could see it, in the inward curve of his friend’s shoulders, that Minho was quiet out of guilt. Guilt that he would never have to worry about the thin tendrils of rage that were creeping beneath Newt’s skin. Would never watch the black lines of diseased veins spread like vines of death over his body. Would never lose his mind to an illness that had inflicted the planet so suddenly, they were still uncertain of the death tally. 

What Minho didn’t realized was that Newt was  _ glad _ . Did he envy his friend? Of course. Did he want to live? Absolutely. But he was still glad that of he and Lizzy and Minho and, Newt realized, Thomas, he’d been the one to get sick. Lizzy was barely past childhood, still yet to go off to her first year of college. Minho had a bright future, one with laughter and prosperity and more track trophies than could be counted. And Thomas… Well, Newt couldn’t say why he couldn’t bear the thought of Tommy getting sick. He just couldn't.

Newt however… It was okay if he died. His loss would be minimal, contained to the those who loved him, and easy enough for everyone but Lizzy to move on from. Newt had little to offer the world. He was just a boy with a bum leg and dreams too whimsical to ever admit aloud. That was all. Just dreams. All he had to offer. 

“It’s okay, you know,” Newt said finally, lifting his head and offering his friend a sympathetic smile. That he was dying and giving someone else looks of pity was beyond him. The world was filled with irony these days. “I’m alright, mate. Made my peace with it.”

Minho flinched sharply. The stare he turned on Newt was so devoid of his usual laugh lines and easy personality. Instead, it was laced with confusion and pain, so sharp Newt felt it in his very core. 

“How can you just be at peace with it? Dying?”

He wasn’t. Not really. That had been a lie. Meant to be a mercy, but a lie all the same. Newt was most certainly not okay with dying. He felt so very unfinished, felt cheated and targeted by some invisible god he must have somehow scorned, but he didn’t say any of that. It wouldn’t change anything to rage and swear and cry about his fate. Eventually, Newt would have to accept that he was going to die, and he’d rather attempt it now than let anyone watch him drown trying to live. 

Newt shrugged. “Because there’s nothing else to do. I am a virus to which there is no cure. The longer I fight it, the harder it will be for everyone to let go.”

Minho clenched his teeth so hard, Newt heard them grind. “There has to be something. Anything.” An idea popped into his head, and his eyes lit up with a spark of hope that made Newt’s heart spark with pain. “What did he mean, the med kid, about you being the first?”

Ah, so he’d heard. Newt didn’t want to explain. He didn’t want to explain to Minho that they’d made a fool’s bargain they both knew they couldn’t deliver on. He didn’t want to give false hope. And he didn’t want to explain how that false promise was the only reason Newt had managed to force that wave of diseased agony and rage far enough down to function again. 

But above all, the unspoken promise Thomas had made him felt personal. It felt like it belonged solely to them, to Newt and Thomas, like it belonged that way. And Newt found himself unwilling to share it. 

He shrugged again. “Just something he said to calm me down.”

Minho raised an eyebrow, understanding that Newt was withholding information, but didn’t press it. Newt had always loved that about Minho. He knew when not to push, when to speak and when to let the silence cleave the world in two. Sometimes, Newt just needed Minho there, a presence to comfort him when memories became too much to bear. And sometimes he needed Minho to slap him upside the head and tell him to get the bloody hell up again. 

“I didn’t think he’d been able to do it. I thought they’d shoot you up with some sedative and tell me I couldn’t come back.” Minho admitted, rubbing a tired hand over his face. He stared at the floor as he talked, as if he were afraid for Newt to see his expression, how haunted he was, even though his voice already conveyed it well enough. “You weren’t… you. Seeing me, it set you off. And when you were mumbling about me not being allowed to be here, you didn’t even look human. You were so scared you became something different, almost animal.

“I was afraid of you.  _ For _ you.” Minho whispered, and Newt could barely swallow back his shame. “We’ve been friends a long time, man, and I’ve never seen you that scared. The kid - he didn’t even blink. Just walked up and grabbed you and said your name until you were you again.”

Newt let a whisper of a smile tug at his lips at that. He’d felt it, the tug on a thread, of Thomas calling him back from the brink of his madness. He added another tally to his list of Thomas’s heroic acts gone unnoticed, and promised himself that one day he would write them all down, so Thomas might see all the little things he’d done that kept Newt feeling human. Kept him wanting to fight. 

“You like him.” Minho said, not a question.

Minho didn’t specify in what way, so Newt didn’t either. That was bridge he wasn’t sure he was willing to cross. After all, what use was a crush when he’d likely be dead within a week?

“There’s just something about him, I guess. He makes me feel like I might actually have a shot at beating this,” Newt chuckled. “As stupid as I know that is. Do you know what they all did, the doctors and staff, when they first brought him in here?”

Minho shook his head, but the look on his face told Newt he had a good idea.

“They were afraid of me.” Newt whispered, shuddering as he remember the cold, frightened gazes of all the doctors who’d passed him over to the DRC like he was nothing more than toxic cargo. He supposed he was. “No one would look at me, talk to me besides telling me to stay put until the transport came for me. And when I got here, they just stuck me in this room without a world. I volunteered to be here, to offer what little I can so that someday maybe no will else will have to die. And they still didn’t see me as anything more than a means to an end. 

“Thomas was the first person to treat me like I was still a human being. Brought me little things, you know, from his own apartment, just to make this place feel like less of a prison.” Newt’s hand tightened around the copy of  _ Walden _ , he still hadn’t put it down, as if it were a lifeline to the world outside. A small, glittering piece of the world he’d soon leave behind. “He’s not like the rest of them.”

When Newt lifted his head, and finally met Minho’s searching stare, he found his friend smiling at him. It was a small, sad sort of smile, but it radiated through him, a true smile despite the heavy burdened that kept it from spreading wide. 

Minho said, “He sort of reminds me of Lizzy.”

And Newt laughed, a true laugh from the pit of his stomach, because Minho was right. In a strange way, he could see the parallels between his sister and the young scientist. The quiet resolve and stoic determination. Only, where Lizzy was soft and unburdened, Thomas walked as if he’d endeavored to hold the weight of the sky. A modern day Atlas, struggling to hold the life of every soul on his shoulders. 

But Newt’s laugh was short lived, as he remembered his sister, and why Thomas had likely brought Minho here. If had been unfair of him, to ask Thomas to ask Minho to bring his little sister the news. And yet he’d hoped to avoid this moment, the confession and the request. 

“Lizzy doesn’t know yet. That I’m sick.”

Minho’s smiled slipped way. It only took him a few moments to piece it all together. He shook his head furiously, dread already filling his gaze. “No. No way.”

“It can’t be anyone else,” Newt pleaded, shoving the tears that threatened to spill over into the back of his mind and quietly telling them to piss off. “After Dad… She can’t have another stranger tell her she’s alone. I asked Tommy to find you so that you could tell her. So she could know she had someone left, even after I’m gone.” Newt swallowed hard, and closed his eyes before forcing out the next words. “And so you can make sure she never comes here. Never sees me like this.”

“You can’t - you can’t ask me to do that. She’ll hate you forever, if she doesn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

“I know,” Newt let the words tumble past his lips in a hush. “But it’s better than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“Watching me turn into a monster. I want…” Newt found himself unable to form words. He wanted Thomas there, because Thomas would have understood, would have finished the sentence Newt could barely force past his throat as he looked at his best friend, and admitted what he truly wanted. “I want her, and you, to remember me as  _ me _ . I don’t want your last image of me to be a person you don’t recognize, can barely associate with being human. I need to know I can die without leaving scars behind, or at least as little as I can manage.”

Realization dawned on Minho’s face. “You don’t want me to come back.”

He didn’t cry. Neither of them did. Not as they discussed how Minho would tell Lizzy. Not when Newt told Minho to take his room at the apartment, to change whatever he liked. Not when Newt asked not to be buried, but for his ashes to be given out amongst the people he’d loved, to carry with them or release him to the wind. He wanted everyone to choose their own way to grieve, whether they needed to hold him close or let him go. 

When Thomas finally came to retrieve him, Minho hugged Newt so tightly it hurt. He’d pulled away with tears glazing his eyes, but still refused to let them fall. “I don’t want to leave you alone with this.”

And despite everything, Newt smiled, flickering his gaze to the dark haired boy hovering in the doorway. “I’m not alone,” he told Minho, and it wasn’t a lie. “I’ve got Tommy. Right, mate?”

Thomas didn’t say anything back, but he smiled and dipped his head in a bashful, blushing sort of way. A nod of confirmation.

Newt gave Minho another reassuring smile. It was not hard to give. Despite all he was losing - his best friend, his sister, his  _ life _ \- he didn’t feel alone. He’d been cheated out of a great many things in his life. His parents. His track career. His chance at a future. But he had been gifted Thomas’s steady resolved and unwavering devotion to find a cure, and his friendship along with it. 

Strangely, to Newt that felt like enough. 


	4. The Fourth

**Day Four: Thomas**

The black marks of infection made their first haunting, faded appearance on the fourth day. 

Thomas had stayed with Newt long into the night after Minho had gone. They hadn’t spoken much, Newt hadn’t seemed in a particularly talkative mood, but Thomas had understood the silent request for company. And so they sat together, Newt thumbing through the books Thomas provided, and Thomas pouring over his notes from the day spent in the lab.

Nothing had changed. They were no closer to a cure. Science was failing him. The realization shook him so thoroughly, he could barely catch his breath. Science was concrete. And science was telling him he simply didn’t have the time. He couldn’t do the impossible. Not before Newt faded away.

Newt didn’t betray his steady resolve to be brave that following morning, when Thomas walked in and felt the wrongness of things. He’d always had a strange sort of intuition, had always been able to sense when someone was suffering. It’d make him a good doctor, he thought, to know when things were progressing toward dire circumstances. 

He’d halted in the doorway, eyes locked on Newt, sitting on that damned bed as he always was, who wore a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. Neither of them spoke for a few long, tense moments. 

It had become something of a secret language between them, that silence. They could convey so much more through their gazes than they could their words. And what a strange and wonderful thing that was - to understand and be understood without having to speak. To understand with startling clarity what emotions raged behind someone’s eyes, and know what was needed to sedate them. 

And in Newt’s eyes, Thomas could see that he needed to maintain that ruse of calm and brazen humor. That that mask Newt wore so no one would feel the depth of his pain was also the only thing keeping him together. Thomas’s heart broke a little, knowing Newt would rather suffer in silence than let anyone else share his grief. 

But Thomas also understood it with a burning sort of clarity, and he chose to honor it. Better to smile so Newt could smile. Better to suffer quietly than let Newt know he was suffering at all. They were very much alike that way, but Thomas had the feeling neither of them were quite as good at it as they perceived themselves to be.

Thomas finally let the door swing closed. Swallowed tightly, and walked to pull his usual stool to Newt’s bedside. He did not have to be asked to let Newt speak first. To let him set the tone and not breach the companionable silence until he was ready. It didn’t take long.

“So, I guess I can’t really hide this,” Newt shrugged, smile still casual and bright, though Thomas heard the quaver of fear beneath his false bravado. “I noticed it when I woke up this morning.”

Darkness breached his vision, threatened to tumble Thomas from his chair as Newt extended his arm, exposing the sickly black trails of sludge clouding his veins. The virus was spreading. Newt would be lucky to last another few days. 

Clinically, Thomas knew that Newt was one of the lucky ones. There had been others, before him, who’d only lasted a few hours before the Flare had driven them insane. Before the fever had stopped their brains and stopped their hearts. Before they’d tried to take matters into their own hands to stop the flurry of visions that pulled them down into the ageless dark. Newt was one of the lucky ones, for the spread to be so slow. To have days instead of hours.

But it didn’t feel lucky. It felt like a cosmic joke of the universe. Thomas had treated many, many people. All of them good and decent and deserving of better than what they got. And yet, Newt was the purest of them. Not because he was perfect, Thomas wasn’t naive enough to believe in perfection, but because he refused to balk at his circumstance. 

Newt was miles underwater, the pressure building by the moment, threatening to crush that very last ounce of air from his lungs. There was no hope left. Only a choice, to breathe the water in and let himself go peacefully, or fight until the bitter end. And Newt was still clawing for the surface, still fighting for that last gulp of air he knew he’d never get. 

Thomas thought Newt was probably the bravest person he’d ever met. 

“We could get Teresa in here,” Thomas joked, forcing himself to match Newt’s light smile even as his stomach threatened to overflow with bile. “She’s got a compact in her purse. Cover that unsightly thing right up.”

Newt let out a soft laugh, his eyes shining with gratitude. “Thank you, Tommy.”

And that had been that. They went through the days tests slowly, to extend the time Thomas could spend before he was forced to check on other patients, forced back to the lab and the quiet of minds racing, trying to solve a maze designed without exits. Every time he left Newt’s room, he saw the A5 of the doorway in a harrowing glow behind his eyelids. Like a beacon, it seemed to draw him back. 

Results were bitter and exhausting, confirming what those horrid black trails of decay had already told them. Newt was dying, his cells decaying at an alarming rate. Thomas scheduled a CT, already dreading the imagery that would tell him what they both already knew. The lesions would be attacking Newt’s brain, first eating away his  center for reasoning and decision making, and then leaching into everything else. 

It wasn’t fair. Thomas could not get over the unfairness and wrongness of their circumstance. Good people, kind people - like Newt - didn’t deserve the horror that was being inflicted upon them. Thomas had never been a bad person, but he was no shining medal of valor either. Knowing that the disease was random, that some people would be blessed with immunity and many, many more would not did nothing to settle the torrent of emotions waging war in his stomach.

Thomas wasn’t happy he was immune. Not in the slightest.

He felt guilty.

What right did he have to live when someone like Newt should die? There wasn’t an answer among the cosmos that would satisfy him. Because the ugly, horrific truth was that there  _ was no reason _ . Thomas would likely live a full life, until he was aged and gray and grumbling about stiff joints and skin that had long since lost its elasticity, and Newt would be ashes somewhere in the wind or in a box in someone’s closet. It alarmed Thomas how badly he wanted to trade places. How he understood so suddenly that he’d do anything to take Newt’s place, and give the other boy some hope for a future that he deserved. 

Determination seemed a weak word for what Thomas felt. That raw need and hunger to  _ fix _ and  _ heal  _ and  _ defend _ . He had to find a way to save Newt. It was becoming an obsession, a sleeplessness that ate at his skull and scratch behind his eyes like a feral dog. Maybe this was how Teresa had felt, this long, long year, trying to find a cure for a corpse. Losing her mother had taken her to the edge of existence and back, and until now Thomas had never understood how Teresa’s life existed wholly and completely around finding a cure. But he understood it now. Because all the crossroads of his mind led back to a memory of a glowing boy kicking his legs against a hospital bed like a defiant child, and Thomas didn’t think he could rest until he found a way to keep that childlike hope and resolve on this Earth for as long as he could. Newt deserved the life that was being cheated from him. 

And yet, if Thomas paused, it was more than that. It was more than selflessness to a boy who deserved better - because Newt did, he truly did deserve more years than he was likely to get. But it was also a selfish need, because Thomas wanted to know him. He was the ocean, and Newt the moon. Thomas was being pulled by the force of Newt, chasing him and never quite catching up. But he thought he might be able to chase Newt’s heels for his whole life, because they were drawn together. Magnetized. And Thomas didn’t know what that meant, or what it would lead to, but he needed to find out. He wanted all the stolen moments he could buy, and Thomas was beginning to realize there was next to nothing he wasn’t willing to do to get them.

“Tell me something, Tommy,” Newt asked, hedging a little closer to the edge of the bed. His knees were just an inch from the elbow Thomas rested on the bed while he scribbled notes in Newt’s file, and Thomas felt that distance like livewires of electricity crackled between them. “What’s your family like?”

Thomas’s head shot up, his eyes seeking Newt’s with confusion and surprised painted clear across his features. It was such a peculiar question, and one Thomas had never been asked. He hadn’t made close enough friends in classes to warrant the subject ever being breached, and everyone in the research program knew his history through Dr. Paige. The only person Thomas had ever talked to outright about his life before college was Teresa, and she asked surprisingly few questions. The now was important to Teresa, and to all those he’d manage to form fragile bonds with in the lab. Scientists didn’t care what had brought Thomas to study the flare, only that he had. 

Newt smiled, continuing to talk when it became clear Thomas wouldn’t. “I talk about Lizzy all the time. I just - I realized I’ve never asked you about your family. I’m curious what they’re like.”

“I don’t know.” Thomas answered honestly. 

“What do you mean? You don’t know if you should answer?”

“No. I don’t know what they’re like.”

“You’re estranged? That’s rough, mate.”

“No.” Thomas managed, keeping his voice carefully devoid of emotion. “I’ve never met them. That I can remember, anyways.”

Beside him, Newt squirmed uncomfortably. It was clear that this was a subject Newt had expected, a turn of events neither of them were prepared for. Newt, however, was not one to balk for long. There was very little that gave Newt pause to hold his tongue, if he so desired to speak. They were both relatively quiet, save for with each other, but Newt was more likely to have something important to say. 

“I didn’t realize,” Newt stated the obvious. “I feel like I’ve just made an arse of myself.”

Thomas gave him a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. I would tell you about them, if I knew anything. But really I just had a collection of foster parents and group home social workers, none of whom I was ever very close with. Teresa is the closest thing to family that I’ve got.”

Newt nodded his understanding. “Will you tell me about her then? She works here with you, right?”

“Yeah, she’s probably in the lab right now,” Thomas provided easily, setting his clipboard in his lab. “She doesn’t really like to work with the patients if she can help it.” With the last words, Thomas flinched. 

“Why not?”

There was a moment, where Thomas debated not answering, because the answer was sad and complicated, and that was probably the last thing Newt needed. Yet, it was not Thomas’s place to decide what Newt could or couldn’t handle, and Newt had asked him on that very first day to tell the truth. So Thomas told him.

“Her mom was one of the first people to ever get the Flare. Before we really knew what it was yet. And Teresa tried to take care of her, to keep her away from people and wait for someone out there to figure out how to help her. But her mom died, I would get into details, but it was pretty terrible, and Teresa came here to research. It’s all she does. This lab, it’s more her home than her apartment. And at first, she met with every patient we had. She knew their names and birthdays and did everything she could to make them feel comfortable and known, but people kept dying.” Thomas sighed, rubbing a tired hand across his face. “She doesn’t like to know people anymore. To see someone’s face and know that there’s likely nothing she can do to help them. It’s hard on all of us, but I think it tore something open that Teresa won’t be able to stitch back together until we find a cure.”

Newt was quiet for a long time. Thomas watched him while Newt played with the frayed edges of one of the blankets Thomas had brought in for him, his eyebrows pulled together in concentration and his mouth set in a subdued frown. Thomas didn’t regret sharing the story, but he felt a little guilty as sharing a story that wasn’t his own. 

He’d never lost someone. Was there a rule when speaking about the dead? Was he supposed to keep that story locked away, until Teresa gave him a key and invited others in? Thomas couldn’t figure out if he’d overstepped a line, but part of his didn’t mind. Even if he hadn’t been the only person to spend more than a few brief moments in Newt’s room, he would have trusted Newt with this secret anyways. Because in a strange way it was a secret, a truth too heavy to be handed easily onto the next person. That much, at least, Thomas understood. 

“Does it -” Newt tried, voice thick. He cleared his throat, hiding his eyes from Thomas has he continued to stare at his blankets. “Does it feel like that for you? Like something is torn open?”

“It didn’t used to.”

Newt tilted his head up, finally acknowledging Thomas with wide, almost hopeful eyes. There were several long moments of quiet while they studied each other’s faces, and Thomas held his breath. This was a defining moment, he knew, even before Newt spoke. Something was changing, growing and morphing into something newt, and he dared not breathe so as to keep it out of light. 

“What changed?”

He felt a blush of nerves color his cheeks. Thomas wasn’t often embarrassed, but he also wasn’t often asked to talk about himself at an capacity that might promote judgement or rejection. What he was about to say felt charged and dangerous and stupid, like shoving a fork in electrical socket and expecting not to get burned. 

“You did, I guess.”

“I did?” Newt’s voice was so quiet, it was barely even a whisper. He sounded tender and coaxing, as if Thomas were a scared child who needed to be pushed to explain a nightmare in order to fall back asleep. Thomas had never heard Newt use that voice, so soft and aged. They were close in age, but Newt felt older and more experienced with those two little words.

“I’ve never been close with a volunteer before,” Thomas  admitted, training his eyes on Newt’s stilled fingers while he spoke. “I’ve always cared about the outcome, always wanted to keep people alive. That’s always been the same. But I’d never connected with anyone when I came in for exams. I was pleasant and kind and I wanted to give them their best chance, but with you… It feels personal. I’ve watched… I’ve watched a lot of people die,” Thomas whispered the last words, barely able to force them from his mouth, “but this is the first time I feel like I have something of my own to lose.”

“You consider me yours?”

Thomas nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”

From the corner of his eyes, Thomas thought he saw the corner of Newt’s mouth curl in a small, private smile. Still, he didn’t look up. He knew the question Newt would ask. That silent way of speaking told him enough, so Thomas answered before the words could breach the air.

Slowly, the movement mechanical and forced, Thomas withdrew a small notebook from the pocket of his lab coat. He carried it with him everywhere, never out of reach, but he’d never allowed anyone to see it before. Most pages were blank, but the first three were filled with black slashes. Tallies. A small monument in remembrance to the dead. 

“Sixty-four.” Thomas answered the unspoken question, and surprising surge of emotion locking up his throat. 

He hadn’t lied to Newt. Losing people was a part of the job, and he’d never felt connected to a patient until now. But he felt responsible. And guilt… Guilt had a way of eating at you. Not so unlike the virus that was killing Newt, Thomas’s guilt was killing him. Only, the process was slower, drawn out of weeks and years so he could feel every vital piece of himself being leached away. 

His science and balance hadn’t saved the sixty-four people he’d watched fade into husks of human beings, harbingers of violence and despair. He remembered all their names. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and children. They’d all belonged to someone. And now Thomas was finding out what it meant to belong to someone damned, and the enormity of what he couldn’t do made his shoulders shake with barely restrained sobs. 

How Teresa carried around this weight was a mystery to Thomas. Her heavy moods and deep silences were quite suddenly easy to understand. It occurred to Thomas that there were some voids that could never be filled. The hole in Teresa was being shoveled with research into a cure, but it only slowed the rate of expansion. She was still broken, still fading, and Thomas didn’t think even finding a cure could ever fill that depthless black that marred her soul. 

Thomas had only known Newt for four days, and the thought of his loss brought him to his knees. He could not imagine the gargantuan size of Teresa’s losing her mother. The woman who’d raised her and clothed her and smoothed back her hair when she was sick. Teresa had a thousand and one memories of a woman who’d loved her. Thomas had a handful of moments in a white room, and still he could barely breathe. 

He belonged to Newt. He didn’t know why or how or when it had occurred, but he knew it to be true. And belonging to someone who was going to die was like voluntarily swimming with an anchor tied to his ankle. Newt was drowning, and Thomas would drown with him, only Thomas would be drowning for years and years, long after Newt had let loose his final breath.

Thomas nearly flinched when a hand wrapped around his own, fingers gently encircling his own until they were interwoven and distinguishable from his own through his unshed tears. Newt’s hand in his own was a wonder of a thing. Warmth traveled up his palm in a slow path of desire, his very blood singing to get closer. This was a feeling unlike any Thomas had previously experienced. Something that dipped and sang and flew over his head like it had a life of its own. 

Skin to skin, Newt was so very alive. And Thomas live with him.

Their hands, bound for this moment, were a tether to their fragile mortality. To the promise of tomorrow and afters. The fool’s bargain they’d made felt cemented by this touch. A hand in his own - Thomas didn’t think it should rattle his world so irrevocably. But time spun around him like fireflies caught in a breeze, and he was watching every moment they’d spent in each other’s company float by in a glowing promise of  _ more _ .

Newt was so painfully close, yet an impossible distance as he whispered to Thomas fiercely, “You’re not responsible for that, Tommy. You can’t save everyone.”

“I can’t save anyone,” Thomas breathed, and the admission nearly swallowed him whole.

Fingers tightened on his own, and suddenly Newt’s grip was crushing. Thomas relished it, fought to tangle their fingers tighter until he couldn’t make out where one stopped and the other began. He wanted to absorb Newt into him, every moment and word and touch and glance. 

“Yes, you can,” Newt murmured. Thomas could feel him hovering, their foreheads near close enough to touch, but neither of them breaching the distance. “You made me a promise, remember? There won’t be a sixty-fifth. You’re going to save me.”

It was an empty promise, on both ends. Thomas knew the odds, and he knew Newt did as well. But Newt’s words pulled him back from the ledge nonetheless. Their strange, silent communication promised what neither could say out loud. That they both wanted more. More words, more touches, more time. More of  _ each other _ . It said what circumstance wouldn’t let them say, cleaved the distance their bodies couldn’t. Their souls had reached for each other and clung for dear life.

Thomas wanted to kiss him. He could practically taste Newt’s breath on his lips, already felt the softness of Newt’s skin against his own. The image was so clear, so real, he was certain he’d lived it already. The force of his want had given had brought his fantasies to life, a phantom of the real thing ghosting across his subconscious like a hallucination. 

They needed a cure. There had to be something. Anything. There had to be a reason Thomas couldn’t get sick. There was  _ something _ inside him that could fix this. 

They needed more time. 

And Thomas had to find it.

He had to keep that promise. The only one that had ever mattered. 

Phantom kisses weren’t enough. Thomas would never be content with  _ if _ s and  _ might have been _ s and  _ almost _ s. They’d gone to school together for a year without a clue one another existed. All that time lost… Thomas needed it to mean something. For the first time in his life, he damned science to hell. They’d met now for a reason. 

And that reason was a cure. 


	5. The Fifth

**Day Five: Newt**

Newt nearly jumped out of his skin when he emerged from an early morning shower to find a slight, dark haired girl with pale skin and dark circles under her eyes sitting on the stool beside his bed where Thomas usually sat.

He’d been lost in revery, standing under the steady stream of water while he traced the shape of Thomas’s hand across his own with a careful finger. His hand had ceased to feel warm since Thomas had left him. Late in the night, Newt had begun to shake, chills wracking his body in great waves. He’d clung to Thomas’s threadbare blankets, balancing a book across his knees when it became clear sleep wouldn’t come.

Touching Thomas had the opposite effect Newt had expected. He’d thought that touch would help fill the void of his desire. That allowing himself that small privilege would be the reward that kept him smiling. But touching Thomas had ripped him open. Where once there had been want, now there was hunger.  _ Need _ . The lack of Thomas’s presence had felt like removing a piece of his very self and casting it out into the dark, unsure if he’d ever be able to find it again.

There was no denying the force of his affections. He craved Thomas with a ferocity that gnawed at his insides like a growing parasite, slowly sucking the very marrow from his bones after it’d run out of other nourishment. He was hollowed out and shivering, waiting for Thomas’s return. Knowing he could never ask for what he wanted because he was a dead man walking, a ghost in a human skin.

It felt like a punishment, and Newt had laid awake through the night wondering what he’d done to earn as cruel a fate as the one inflicting him. He was a monster in the making, and he’d fallen for an angel destined to lead him to the afterlife and then part ways. 

The agony he felt morphed and twisted into something sinister in his veins. Inside his body, the virus raged, and Newt was raging with it. His loose grip on himself was connected to a tattered copy of a novel with pages worn thin with overuse, always clutched in one hand during his waking hours. Keeping a small piece of Thomas with him… It did more than it should have.

When he spotted the girl, fear gripped him. Paranoia skyrocketing. Panic that he’d overstepped when he’d gripped Thomas’s hand led him down a dangerous road. What if Thomas had sent in someone else because he didn’t want to see Newt again? What if Newt was to be alone with people who treated him like a stain instead of a person, holding him just beyond arm’s length and leaving him in the painful silence that followed?

Newt didn’t think he could bear it.

“Do I have a new doctor now?”

The words left his mouth in a whisper, too painful to raise to a full volume.

The girl smiled at him. A pitying, sad sort of smile. In fact, everything about her looked hollowed by loss. The blue hollows under her eyes made her look as if she hadn’t slept in days, and the wrinkles in her lab coat spoke a similar story. The pallor of her skin was near  translucent, and Newt thought she must not have seen the sun in years. She looked haunted. So much like the ghost in human skin Newt believed himself to be.

“I’m one of your doctors,” she offered kindly. She waved a hand toward his bed, gesturing for him to take a seat. “I’m usually in the lab, but I thought I’d come in today and check on your progress.”

Her words clicked in his brain, the pieces sorting themselves until a clear picture emerged. “You’re Teresa.” She started at her name, clearly surprised to hear it on Newt’s tongue. “Thomas told me about you.”

“All good things, I hope. Tom can be mischievous about me when he wants to be,” Teresa said with an uncanny fondness.

Newt clenched his hand tighter around  _ Walden _ as he sank to his seat. Hearing Teresa call Thomas  _ Tom _ lit him up with jealous rage, and he hated the familiarity of it in her mouth. Logically, he had no right. But logic was a fragile thing when you were slowly going insane. 

“He said you didn’t see patients anymore,” Newt managed to grind out the words, with no shortage of animosity.

If Teresa heard the lilt of anger in his tone, she didn’t react to it. She kept her kind smile plastered on her lips, but he could see the calculation in her eyes. She examined him the way a scientist examines a sample under a microscope, with cold detachment. 

He wanted to sympathize with her. Yesterday, when Thomas had told him her story, Newt had ached for the girl. However, under the chill of her gaze he found himself unable to muster an ounce of pity. No matter his impending doom, or that fiery rage working knots in his core, Newt was still human. He was still a person. And being looked at like the plague that he was had him biting his tongue so hard it bled.

Knowing Thomas would be upset and disappointed if he bit Teresa’s head off was the only thing that kept him silent. This was Thomas’s best friend, and jealousy or no, he owed it to Thomas to at least attempt to offer the girl the benefit of the doubt. 

“I don’t. But I’m making an exception,” Teresa told him, and there it was - a slight tremor of strain in her voice. It made Newt like her fractionally more. At least she wasn’t as emotionless as she looked. “Tom is - Tom is fond of you. I’ve never seen him this driven. I’m just… I want to help.”

Newt didn’t doubt her. From what Thomas had told him, Teresa was obsessed with finding a cure. But he thought she should have been happier that Thomas was more driven than ever, that he was using his considerable brain power to help her with newfound stamina. Instead, she looked like she might be sick at any moment. 

“You don’t seem very excited about having his help.”

“I fear for him.” Teresa admitted quietly, and her gaze finally softened, if only slightly, as she let herself look Newt over. “For what he stands to lose.”

“I’m just another patient. He’ll forget about me after I’m gone.”

“We both know that’s not true. You can save your breath on trying to convince me otherwise. Whatever you two have managed to find in each other… It’s changed him. More than I ever did.” Teresa’s voice shook, and Newt thought he saw a sliver of silver at the ring of her eyes, tears waiting to be shed. “I know what it’s like to lose someone to this disease. And I would do and give and sacrifice  _ anything _ to make sure Thomas never felt that sort of pain.”

Newt looked her over warily. “What are you saying, exactly? Because I’ve been busy losing my bloody mind over here, and if you’re not going to spit out what it is that you want, then you can just piss off and leave me to die in bloody peace, for shuck’s sake.”

Teresa watched him with a critical eye. He saw her taking in the tremor that wracked his whole body, and the straining vein in his neck where he’d tense impossibly to keep himself from spitting anymore vile words. Teresa rubbed him the wrong way, and he couldn’t decided if he would have disliked her so vehemently if lesions weren’t eating away at his brain. 

Pity wouldn’t save him. He didn’t want her looking at him with that stupid, detached sort of sympathy he saw brewing in her eyes. And he realized he didn’t care if he sounded cruel. Because she might understand what it was like to watch someone die, but Teresa didn’t understand what it was like to be  _ dying _ . 

He felt every miserable moment of it. The pounding in his brain that had begun yesterday had grown and grown until it was a roar trapped inside his head, reverberating against his skull and eviscerating his mind one shred at a time. Newt was always cold, always caught on the edge of a shiver even though he knew his body was on fire. Thomas had noted the fever yesterday, but it was still skyrocketing, boiling him from the inside out. And the  _ itch _ . 

Newt thought it was likely the itch that drove people mad. Everywhere his black veins spread felt like a million insects chewing and clawing against the underside of his skin. He could feel them like individual bodies, each scurrying and skittering inside him with reckless abandon. They were a hallucination, they had to be, but he  _ felt _ them like they were real.

“I want to do more tests, more invasive than Thomas will recommend for you.” Her words sent his heart rate jackhammering. “His affections for you keep him from doing what’s medically necessary. What I want to do, it’ll hurt. We can give you medications to help, but you’ll feel it.”

“Why wouldn’t Tommy do the tests? If they could help?”

Teresa offered him a grim smile. “He might have, after he saw how you’re faring today. But because he cares for you. He won’t want to see you in pain. You’ll come to find that Thomas would absorb all the pain of the world if he could. Watching someone hurt, especially someone he loves, is not something he finds easy to bear.”

He didn’t doubt her. Newt had seen the glazed look of guilt that flickered over Thomas’s eyes when he’d seen the black lines threading their way through Newt’s skin like patchwork. It was one of the things that had made Newt like the other boy so much - that he felt everything, and yet never let anyone feel the weight of it. Thomas could hold the world on his shoulders and never flinch, even when the pain was unbearable, just so no one would ask to help. 

The prospect of more pain than he was already feeling sent a tremor down his spine, making his legs jerk against the hospital gurney that had served as his bed these last four long nights. He couldn’t watch it once it started. Teresa has the common sense to look away as Newt’s horror mounted, his legs quaking at a 4 on the Richter scale, shaking and crashing and trashing against his sheets no matter how hard he tried to make them stop. The loss of his autonomy - that was new. And even more terrifying than the roar in his skull or the oil slick in his vein or the rage that came and went so quickly he often couldn’t tell it was happening until it was over. 

Dying wasn’t poetic or grand, like they made it out to be in stories. It was scary and blurry and cold, always cold. He wanted to go back, wanted to run until heat made his face turn red as a tomato and laugh so loudly his voice ricocheted off the stars and returned to him ten times more brilliant. Newt so badly wanted to live, to see Thomas in something other than his lab coat and walk through campus after dark talking about Thomas’s life in foster care and what Lizzy would think of him. 

He wanted the future that was so terribly out of reach. He was staring at the top floor only to realize the stairs had been hacked away. Impossible to reach.

“Can he be there?” Newt found himself asking. “Thomas? Can he be there with me when you run the other tests? He won’t argue if I tell him it’s what I want.”

Asking felt wrong. Making Thomas watch him succumb to that level of pain felt selfish and awful, but he couldn’t help it. They’d felt like a team these past days, and Newt couldn’t picture a moment of this process without him. Thomas belonged to him, in a way. They belonged to each other, with each other. The bond they’d forged wasn’t something Newt knew how or want to break. 

For a few long moments, Teresa chewed on her lip in concentration. “I suppose I could ask Aris to help me with the test but only-”

She broke off mid-sentence as the airlock door let out a loud hiss, and a tall body stumbled in, head thrown back over his shoulder in a search. “Did someone else come in today? I can’t find your chart-” Thomas stopped when he turned around, seeing Newt on the bed and Teresa seated before him. His eyes widened, first in shock and then with worry as his gaze began to fly over Newt in a panic. “What happened? I stopped for coffee, I’m only a few minutes late. What’s wrong? Why didn’t anyone page me?”

“Tom,” Teresa began, restraining a sigh when she realized Thomas wasn’t listening. He was frozen in the doorway, eyes still glued to Newt like he could use x-ray vision to find out whatever had caused Teresa to be here. “Tom, please calm down.”

Thomas’s voice rose to a shout. “ _ What’s wrong with him?! _ ”

“Nothing’s wrong with me, Tommy. Not anymore than there was yesterday.” Newt offered him a small smile, as much as he could muster, and half-heartedly extended his hand. “Come sit with me, okay? We’ll explain.”

“Nothing’s wrong?”

“No. I’m alright, mate. I’m alright.”

The sigh of relief Thomas exhaled was so strong that Newt felt the brush of his breath. Thomas nodded, casting Teresa an apologetic glance before striding towards Newt. A flutter of startled surprise and happiness coiled in Newt’s chest when Thomas took his hand, entwining their fingers like it was the most natural thing in the world, before sitting down beside him. Their thighs pressed together, tangled hands resting on Thomas’s knee. 

Thomas didn’t look at either of them for a long moment, instead using his free hand to trace the places where their fingers interlaced, mapping their shape like he could commit them to memory. His touch was so soft, so intimate, Newt felt like he was being studied by an artist, every dip and value and stretch of skin explored to be recreated and immortalized anew. 

“You want to do the other tests.” Thomas murmured, finally looking up and glancing between Newt and Teresa. “Bone marrow, right? To start.”

“I hadn’t had the chance to explain it to Newton yet but -”

Thomas cut her off. “Newt. Just Newt. He doesn’t like to be called Newton.”

Teresa’s brows rose marginally on her forehead, but she began again. “I haven’t had the chance to talk to  _ Newt _ but yes,” Teresa sighed, nodding factually. “I’d like to test his marrow. See how far the virus has progressed, if it’s different from anyone else’s.”

“You know it won’t be.” Thomas murmured, closing his eyes tightly. As if he were already trying to brace himself for the pain Newt might feel. “It’s always the same, Teresa. Why put him through that? Why do it at all if the results never change?”

“Because you promised me you’d do everything.” Newt reminded him, pulling on their knotted hands to force Thomas to look at him. When their eyes met, Thomas’s were shining with grief so intense it nearly cleaved Newt’s heart in two. It was instinct to reach out, to thread his free hand into Thomas’s hair and pull him closer, until they were touching, forehead to forehead and nose to nose and breath to breath. “You promised. And I want to. I can’t sit in this room forever and wait for you to burst in with a miracle, Tommy. I have to do my part.”

With Thomas this close, the whole world narrowed down to the feel of their skin pressed together. The taste of mint that crested Newt’s lips from Thomas’s breath, the coffee bean smell of his skin from wherever he’d stopped for coffee this morning. Teresa and the blasted white room and everything else faded away. He wanted to remember this, to carve it on his skin in permanent ink so he could carry it with him wherever he was going after this life ended. It was such a torturous, tantalizing taste of what might have been.

Thomas’s distressed gaze flickered quickly across Newt’s face, catching once or twice on his lips before Thomas wrenched his eyes back upward. “It’ll hurt,” he whispered. “More than anything you’ve ever felt before. It’ll hurt. And it might be for nothing.”

Newt only watched him for a few long moments. The sadness in Thomas’ eyes broke him, but the tether of their hands and everywhere Thomas’s heat pressed against his body sent a subtle wave of elation through to his core. And yet, Newt couldn’t enjoy it. Not with his death hanging over his shoulder like a storm cloud, threatening to arrive at any moment. Not with the itch at the back of his mind, the dirty claw of madness threatening to swallow him whole.

He squeezed Thomas’s hand tighter.

“And it might be for everything.”


	6. The Sixth

**Day Six: Thomas**

“He’s really not going to get any better, is he?”

The soft patter of rain on the windows echoed through the empty lab like a memory on the wind, a whisper of something forgotten, aching to be remembered but too fleeting to catch the light. Thomas felt the odd ache of the rain like a chill in his bones, a phantom pain that told more of what was coming than what had been. Exhaustion seeped from his every pore, had whittled away at muscle and sinew and bone until it had made itself a hollow home in his very marrow. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than a few precious moments. Hours were slipping through his fingers like minute grains of sand, first in a trickle and then a landslide. There were too many tests to run, too many questions unanswered, too many words captured behind his swollen tongue that he feared he’d never get the chance to force out.

The apartment across campus would have a thin layer of dust by now. At some point, he’d stopped being able to sleep in his own bed. It felt empty and cold, a place keeper for the flame flickering down to embers miles away. He’d lost sight of whether he was trying to grow the fires or stomp them out. Thomas’s every thought and movement and action was anchored by one all consuming thought.

Newt.

Leaving him had become unbearable. Even the yard that separated the lab from Newt’s room felt like an ocean. Thomas had taken to sleeping in the empty patient rooms, too shy to ask Newt if he could stay and watch over him, too afraid not to check Newt’s vitals every few hours. 

With Teresa making her very notable exception and administering the majority of Newt’s tests, Thomas only left Newt’s bedside to attempt to sleep and break hospital regulations by allowing Minho into the lab for coffee.

They sat together now, both lost in the tide of sorrow pulling at their hearts with a startling undertow. Friendship had blossomed between them on the foundation of mutual grief, a pillar of adamant that thrived on the despair it leached from their souls. It was such a strange thing, to wish for someone’s company only so you could share in the burden of failure and regret. But it was their habit. When the lab was all but empty, save Aris and Chuck, who Teresa had not-so-covertly commissioned to keep an eye on Thomas, they gathered together between the microscopes and slides and clicking machines to trade in desolation for a few precious moments of being understood.

“I don’t know,” Thomas murmured. And he didn’t.

Teresa had run every conceivable test they had to offer. Thomas had held Newt’s hand while he groaned in agony during his spinal tap, had half carried Newt back to his bed when they’d taken enough blood to supply half a cohort for transfusions, had seen the glimmer of tears that Newt tried to hide behind a forced laugh. The results were all the same. 

Newt was lucky to be alive, let alone in control of his own body. The virus was so thoroughly immersed in his body that it was near impossible to find an area with any semblance of purity remaining. 

They were out of options. Out of ideas. Out of time. 

“Lizzy’s been sleeping at my place.” Minho murmured. “She won’t go home without him there. And every day she asks me if I’ve seen him, if he’ll let her visit yet. She needs her brother, Thomas. I can’t - I’m not a leader. And I’m sure as hell not a parent. I don’t know how to help her… Could you -”

Thomas looked up at Minho, saw the tears brimming his friends eyes and spilling down his cheeks, and had to look away. Grief stained the air like humidity, thick to choking and twice as heavy as steel across their backs. Thomas took no pleasure or comfort in watching someone break.

Minho was a shell, haggard with dark circle and unshaved stubble, disheveled and morose. Thomas had the peculiar thought that Newt wasn’t the only one that was dying, but rather that he and Minho were sinking into the abyss as well. Only, Newt would escape to an  _ other _ , would cease to be with some semblance of peace, while he and Minho became reanimated corpses, following the paths of human men and feeling nothing at all. 

“Could you talk to her?”

_ No. _ The answer ricocheted off the walls of his mind but didn’t leave his mouth. Lizzy was forbidden territory. Not because Newt had asked it of him, but because Thomas had built up a wall around him that refused to let anyone else in. His heart was too tattered, in too much disarray, to hold any more emotion than what was already swallowing him whole.

And yet… “I’ll ask Newt if he would mind.”

Minho eyed him cautiously. There was a long moment of hesitation, a falter in the opening of his mouth before he finally let the words tumble out like marbles from a jar - in a cascade. “I’m glad he met you. And I’m sorry it was now, with all of this.” 

It was such a simple statement, but it bent something in Thomas that couldn’t be reforged. He hadn’t cried, not yet, but the tears started to spill then. They fell with such a constant chockablock of salt that his skin stung. 

His whole life, he’d believed in science. He’d based every decision on the balance of nature, on equal and opposite reactions. Maybe he’d been naive, maybe he’d been too analytical, but his beliefs had been shattered like fragile glass sculptures, once gleaming and whole, now far beyond repair. Thomas wanted someone to blame, a negligent God or a loose thread in the universe.

But he could only blame himself.

Thomas had never felt inadequate. Not as an orphan. Not as an emancipated minor entering college when most people were still terrified of their SATs. Not when he’d watched people enter a white room on their own two feet and exit it on a wheeled stretcher, clothed in a thin white sheet of failure. He’d been so complacent in life. And what a tragedy it was that you never realized how much more you could have been doing until you had something to lose.

-

He shouldn’t have done it, but Thomas was getting used to doing all kinds of things he shouldn’t do. It was near two o’clock in the morning by the time Minho went home, led out by a tired and rather disgruntled Aris, half asleep on his feet and cursing Teresa for using her status as girlfriend to solicit such a labor intensive favor. It had taken Thomas several long moments to convince Aris that he’d be alright overnight, and that he’d call Chuck if he needed help with anything.

The quiet should have been blissful, but Thomas only stood in the empty exam room he’d claimed as a bedroom for the past few nights for a few moments before deciding the silence was unbearable, the loneliness too crushing to endure. Which had lead him here.

Newt’s room was all still, and Thomas flinched when the harsh crack of the air seal breaking shattered the tranquility. His heartbeat was so loud in his ears, a clap of thunder that sent him spiraling. Whatever had possessed him to break the rules to this degree, whatever strength it had granted, was fast leaving him. There were so many things wrong with him. With what he wanted. With what he couldn’t allow himself to have.

Thomas could feel the years draining out of him like a hole in a sandbag, steady and constant and alarmingly fast. He had always thought when he finally wanted someone this way, when he finally ached for a person, that he would have years to explore the possibilities. That they would age together and grow together, that there would be room for a life they could make. He’d never wanted that with Teresa, though once he’d thought he might. He hadn’t felt it with Brenda, though in truth he hadn’t felt or thought much about Brenda in years.

Painfully, the truth was that Thomas wasn’t prepared for whatever was going on inside his body. Inside his heart. He wasn’t prepared to lie awake and reach for a body that had never been there, and never would be. He wasn’t prepared to trace the outline of a long ago caress into the palm of his hand. He wasn’t prepared to feel his chest tearing in two every moment he couldn’t spend with the cornflower-haired boy who’d occupied his every thought since the moment they’d met.

He didn’t believe in soulmates. Or at least, he hadn’t used to. Science couldn’t quantify something like that. Though, Thomas supposed, science couldn’t really quantify love either. Maybe there were just things that would never be explained, could never truly be broken into manageable parts. The size of the universe. The number of stars in every galaxy. The complexities of the human heart.

He was moving without meaning to. Walking when he meant to turn back. He kept meaning to let go, and instead kept pulling in the reins. 

“Tommy?”

Thomas stopped cold. He was still three feet from the hospital bed he’d never seen Newt away from, the lump of a human form beneath the blankets barely distinguishable in the dull light of monitors. There was a complicated pull in his abdomen, tugging this way and that as he tried to remove his stomach from his throat. Newt looked so very small, so much more vulnerable than he had just hours ago, shivering against the plastic rails of the bed and face turned toward Thomas’s motionless figure, caught in a haze of dark like a ghost. 

“Tommy, is that you?”

Each  _ Tommy  _ was a punch in the chest, hot coals in his mouth, but Thomas managed to clear his throat enough to rasp, “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What  are you doing here? Are you alright?”

“I don’t know.” The answer to both questions. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Newt paused, his careful consideration bleeding into the silence. “I can feel it. The madness. Sort of like an itch in the back of my mind. I’m afraid - I’m afraid if I go to sleep, if I’m not awake to keep it out, that I’ll wake up and be something else.” Newt’s voice had gone soft, quiet in a way that told tales of sorrow only the dying, and the people who loved them, could ever understand. “Can you stay for awhile?”

He should have said no. He should have pulled up a chair and exchanged a few minutes of soft words before retreating to his room. He should have offered Newt a sedative and gone about his own business. But he didn’t do any of those things. His self control in tatters, Thomas walked the last three feet to the bed.

“Move over,” Thomas murmured, lowering the plastic guardrail lining the bed and shuffling himself under the covers while Newt scooted the few inches he could, wide eyes reflecting like small moons in the dark.

Body heat crested over Thomas has he pulled the guardrail back into place and turned to look at Newt in the low light of the room. There was barely a hairsbreadth between them, an active effort not to touch. A soft coupling of curls trailed across Newt’s forehead, and Thomas reached with trembling fingers to wipe them the golden strands from the other boy’s eyes. 

Newt sighed, and Thomas nearly melted into the tragedy of the sound. It was just a breath, released into the air from tender lips, and yet it wasn’t. It was a tortured sigh, a promise they both knew would be broken, and yet couldn’t help reaching for. Newt’s entire body caved in with the sound. He lurched closer to Thomas, entire body wracked with spasms, and buried his face in the crook of Thomas’s neck.

On instinct, Thomas wound his arms around Newt’s shaking form, tangled their legs and pulled Newt into him. Heated radiated between them, from their bodies and from more. A spark had ignited in the pit of Thomas’s stomach, fanned into flame by every millimeter of skin where they touched, every tickle of Newt’s breath against his neck, every sliver of hair that licked his palm as he threaded his fingers in and out of Newt’s hair.

There was a moment where he could imagine them like this, days or weeks or months or years from now. Folding into each other on a shared bed, Newt’s lips on his neck and Thomas’s finger in Newt’s hair. He could see them waking up together, trading private smiles in the kitchen while Newt brewed coffee and Thomas burnt their eggs, too distracted by watching Newt move to cook them properly. He could see them pressed tight together on the couch, Newt’s head in his lap while he read a passage from  _ Walden _ . Grocery shopping together and fighting over whether to get sweet or healthy cereal. Running together in the evenings, a friendly competition that always ended in laughter and a kiss. Lunches with Minho, thighs pressed together under the table while laughter permeated the air. Meeting Lizzy, and Newt smiling between them like a golden son.

Thomas saw their whole future spread out before him, and then felt it ripped away as the steady drone of the monitors and beep of Newt’s heart rate came crashing back into his ears. 

He didn’t realize Newt was crying until he felt the dampness at the edge of his shirt.

“Newt,” he murmured, near panic. Carefully, he tugged on Newt’s hair to bring the other boy’s face into the light. Newt’s eyes were red rimmed, face marred with tear tracks. Thomas slipped his hand down to cup Newt’s cheek, sweeping his thumb in broad strokes to wipe away Newt’s tears. “What is it?”

Newt shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut tight and leaning his face further into Thomas’s touch. “I want more time,” he whispered. “I want to do this a thousand times, not one. I want to fall asleep next to you without being afraid of who or what I’ll be when I wake up. I want - I want to have met you years ago.”

“There’s still a chan-“

“Don’t. Don’t tell me I’ll be okay,” Newt gasped out the words, opening his eyes to stare at Thomas while he spoke. “Teresa told me I’m lucky I’m still alive. That it should be impossible for me to even have an autonomy left with how far the virus has spread. I can  _ feel  _ it, Tommy. So just, don’t lie and tell me I’ll be alright. Not tonight.”

Thomas swallowed the lump of tears in his throat. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t take that from Newt, wouldn’t make the other boy comfort him. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell me an alternate reality. One where we end up happy.”

The  _ we  _ nearly broke Thomas. Nearly cleaved him so completely in two that there was no hope for repair. Newt wanting to hear what Thomas thought they could have been should have reassured him. They were on the same page, reading the same lines, but this wasn’t a fairy tale. There was no happy ending. They were stopping mid-novel to discover an obituary, and it was their own. The death of what might have been.

But Thomas told Newt anyways. Fought back the tears and whispered everything he’d ever imagined for them. The winter nights with a coffee maker next to their bed, so no one had to get out of bed with cold feet in the morning. How they’d pack their bookshelves with all of the novels Newt hadn’t read yet, and all the medical texts Thomas would look at once and never get rid of. They’d move into Newt’s apartment, so Lizzy wouldn’t be alone, and she’d groan over finding them kissing in the kitchen but smile privately when she thought they weren’t looking. 

“We have years together,” Thomas whispered, Newt’s cries finally settling. “More mornings that you could possibly count, enough nights together to fill the ones we missed. Lizzy moves out but stays close by, and we force Minho into befriending Teresa and Aris and Chuck. I somehow convince Gally to like me,” at this, Newt let out a startled laugh, “and we stay like that, always. Surrounded by people we love. Just us. Together.”

“I think I’d loved you,” Newt whispered, “in this alternate reality.”

Thomas swallowed a lump in his throat, and tried desperately to calm the reckless beat of his heart. “You do.”

“Do you love me back?”

Thomas closed his eyes, tipping his face closer to Newt’s and gritting his teeth around the restraint he already knew he didn’t have. He opened his eyes, and broke his promise.

“So much more than I should.”

Every moment played in freeze frame, captured in a slide and slowed ten times over. There was unspoken knowledge between them that there was only this once, this moment to touch and caress and  _ be _ before the real world came tumbling back around them. Beneath his hands, Thomas could feel Newt shaking. Whether it was from apprehension or anticipation or ailment, he couldn’t know, and he dared not break the illusion to ask. 

Newt inhaled as sharp breath as Thomas fingers mapped a slow line across his cheek, traversing the topography of Newt’s face until they summited the fine, smooth mountains of Newt’s lips. 

“Please.”

Thomas shivered, the desire and longing coursing through him threatened to burn him up from the inside out. But he didn’t want this to be fast or rushed, didn’t want to race on swift legs when he could stroll and explore. He wanted to remember every second, to feel every wisp of emotion and shiver under every soft caress.

“Say it again,” Thomas murmured, tipping his face a fraction closer and teasing Newt with a whisper of breath against his mouth.

“Please, Tommy. Please.”

Kissing Newt was a cataclysm. Every fragile tendril of resolve for constraint that Thomas had carefully cultivated splintered and shattered. Both hands came to cup Newt’s face, reaching to pull him closer. He could feel the mutual burn of their wanting. The ache to breathe each other in, to infuse their breath and discover every atom of each other. 

Newt’s lips were soft against Thomas’s chapped, his tongue somewhere just south of mint and tantalizing. Under their shared blanket, Newt fisted shaking hands in Thomas’s shirt. 

The kiss was not wild, or fast. It was entirely soundless but the occasional gasp when one of them could no longer hold their breath. It was a study in cartography, each boy memorizing the crest or tongues and swell of lips, the soft brushing of noses and the eyelashes that tickled cheeks. Eyes shut tight, Thomas could have known Newt by touch alone. 

They were lost together in a dream where the future unfolded between them. An infinite space in the shared recesses of their minds where this kiss never ended but went on and on in an endless loop. The world was watching, every atom in the universe memorizing their joining. The stars would  tell stories about them, the saddest of lovers. The almost boys. The once upon a time gone so very wrong.

Thomas and Newt kissed until they were breathless, never moving beyond the soft merging of their mouths. Anything else, anything more, might have broken the illusion. And they so desperately wanted to live within that dream.

Exhaustion called after what could have been minutes or could have been hours. Eventually, the kiss ended, and Newt curled his body around Thomas’s and placed his head on Thomas’s chest. Thomas traced shapes into Newt’s shoulder with the tips of his fingers, writing their story in glyphs and images that lulled them both into sleep.

They fell asleep curled together, infused at every available inch. There was a steady quiet to the world, as if the universe had paused its progression to give them this one moment of peace. Even the stars were watching and waiting, capturing every scribble of story of two star crossed lovers, doomed to part before they’d converged. 

And it was almost enough.

Until Thomas woke up to Newt’s scream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are dangerously close to the end of the tale... I hope you're all prepared for the next chapter (bring tissues). And I do hope you enjoyed that little reworked snippet of canon.


	7. The Last

**Day Seven: Newt**

Things didn’t always end the way they started. The world wasn’t perfectly symmetrical that way, nor did it care to be. Newt, for the better part of his life, had understood that. He’d long ago understood that most people did not leave the world screaming or crying, the way they came into it. And he understood that the first place you saw a person was not likely to be the final place you encountered them. There was something almost poetic about his demise because it truly had come full circle in so many ways.

He had come into the world screaming, and it looked very much like he would leave it that way. 

He had first seen Thomas in this room, and it would be the only place he had ever seen him.

They had built a world out of four white walls, a safe space from the horror of their reality. This room, the one he would die in, was not quite a fantasy and yet it wasn’t truly real either. It was an in-between thing. Something that existed in two very different worlds, both right-side up and upside down.  Newt had come to love it, and come to loathe it. The beeping of the many machines, the soft whirl of the air vents, the velvet feel of the blankets that smelled like a home. The tattered books with fingerprint marks that weren’t his, marking the pages with frequent use that told of great fondness. Everything. 

He’d miss it all.

And yet he couldn’t wait for it to be gone.

Happiness was fleeting. It has eclipsed him in a cocoon for an evening, swaddled him tight like a babe and rocked him into naive bliss for a few ragged hours. Fate, when he decided he believed in it, had carved out a precious swath of moments, the calm before the storm, his end-of-life rally all tied up pretty with a bow. And Newt was grateful for it. 

Distantly, he could hear himself screaming. He knew his body was no longer his, his mind soon to follow, but this scrap of a moment, this fraction of a second, was his. And he could use it. To remember. Make his peace. Find a way to say goodbye.

For what was likely to be the last time, he would remember every good thing. Every story he’d read to Lizzy, every race he’d won before he’d shattered his leg, every movie night with Minho and the lads from the track, every silent conversation with Thomas that had bled into strange contentment and understanding. And he remembered the bad things, too. The mother he’d never really known. The father who’d never watched him grow up. The sister who he’d never dance with on her wedding day. The boy who would never love him for more than a passing of hours.

He decided he was grateful. Decided he was ready. Decided he’d lived a better life than most, even if he hadn’t lived a long one. Newt had loved, he’d had passions, he’d tried and failed to be a hero and ended up a sacrifice. His story, if anyone told it, would be sad but noble. He would go not peacefully, but at peace, knowing that he’d been strong until the bitter end.

Strength lasted less than six whole seconds. Newt crashed into reality with the force of a jet plane, felt the itch in his brain that had turned to fire, thrashed wildly enough to crash from his bed, screamed loud enough to drown out Thomas’s panicked words.

Depending on who was telling the story, Newt was gone in seven days.

But if Newt was telling the story, he was gone in six seconds.

 

**Thomas** :

The screaming didn’t stop when Newt crashed onto the floor. 

It didn’t stop when Thomas slammed the call button for help.

It didn’t stop when Thomas pulled Newt against his chest and pinned down his arms to keep the other boy from hurting himself. It didn’t stop when Teresa and Aris and Chuck rushed in, flushed from running, horror written on their features as they took in the tangled blankets and Thomas’s obviously slept in scrubs and Newt thrashing on the floor like an animal caught in a snare. It didn’t stop for anything. Not Thomas’s sobbed reassurances into Newt’s hair. Not the tranquilizer Teresa stabbed hastily into Newt’s bicep. 

It didn’t stop.

Newt’s screams ripped through time, shredded the laws of the universe and created their own infinity. Some years from that moment, Thomas would still be able to hear them. An echo in his eardrums. A memory too real to have ever truly ended. 

“Thomas?  _ Thomas! _ ”

He couldn’t help his flinch. With Newt still thrashing against his hold, Thomas felt all the eyes on him like needles under his skin. Just hours ago he’d been effervescently naive. There’d been a few moments of hope captured like droplets on a web, hanging, suspended; doomed to fall but beautiful all the same. Thomas had gone from tangling his fingers in Newt’s hair to leaving fingerprint bruises on Newt’s arms.

Terror was not substantial enough. Heartbroken too cliche and timeworn. There was truly nothing to adequately describe how the world had ripped itself apart. An apocalypse had confined itself into his four white-walled hell, Newt’s little prison. Destruction wasn’t enough. They were in a state of complete and utter ruination, an unmaking of the most violent degree. 

Thomas wasn’t aware when he’d begun sobbing. The part of him that was still a scientist was buried far too deep to catalogue the spread of black in Newt’s veins, the way his skin burned so hot it almost hurt to touch, how Chuck was eyeing Thomas as if Thomas needed the tranquilizer, and maybe he did. 

“Tom?”

It was the nickname that broke him out of the cycle. Three simple letters that told of a bond few people understood. 

When he wanted to be, he was a natural leader. He knew what to say and when to say it, enough to encourage and enough to inspire, but he held back enough to still be seen as human. People looked up to him.

He wasn’t a leader today. For the first time, Thomas had looked at his best friend and said two words no one in the room had ever heard him utter.

“Help me.”

Teresa caught his eye, held his stare, and Thomas knew she understood the rest of the words that had gone unspoken.  _ Help me fix this. Help me, I don’t know what to do. Help me, I don’t think I can do this. Help me help me help me _ .

And all the while Newt was still screaming. At some point, his fingernails had carved a vicious, bloody line down Thomas’s left arm. He didn’t even feel it. 

“Tom,” Teresa’s voice was gentle, the voice she reserved for Chuck when he’d awoken from a nightmare, or Aris when they huddled together in the cafe and traced shapes into each other’s palms. It was the voice Thomas imagined she’d used for her mother. The voice reserved for the worst moments, the voice that soothed and took charge at the same time. “We need to get him back into bed. Can you let Aris help you?”

Thomas nodded. With Aris carrying Newt’s feet, they managed to wrestle him back onto the gurney. When Chuck crept forward to put leather restraints around Newt’s wrists and ankles, Thomas let out an animal-keen of despair. Bile crept up into his throat, and he had to turn away. 

Here, when the end was indefinite and Thomas couldn’t discern any way out, the doubt crept in. What did stolen kisses in a quiet room really mean when they were never to be repeated? Caught in the grips of desperation, spiraling through a classic tragedy brought to flesh and bone, was any of it  _ real _ ? 

Had they met somewhere else, anywhere else, days or hours or months before this, would the world still have stopped? Would connection still have been instant?  _ What if _ was such a cruel phrase. What if Thomas had joined the track team as he was supposed to? What if Newt had frequented the small cafe across from the lab? What if what if what if?

The fanciful dreams of Thomas’s heart shuttered in his chest. Glass stalactites of glimmering hope and future rattled together in his chest, fraught with winds of crippling winds of uncertainty, looming over the real world, doomed to fall. 

Newt was dying. Thomas was the only tangible, living thing within reach. It was natural that Newt would gravitate toward him, would seek something of passion and substance to mask the weight of his fear. Thomas might not have minded it, might have been happy to be Newt’s solace, if the depth of his own emotional turmoil had not been so all encompassing. 

_ Do you love me back _ ? 

Yes. A thousand times yes. And what did that even mean? How could you love someone you’d barely known for seven days? Teresa and Aris had worked side by side from months before Aris had even dared to set a cup of a coffee at her elbow and offer a tender smile. They were the most successful couple Thomas knew, albeit the only one, and they were nothing like what Thomas imaged he and Newt were - could have been. 

“Don’t do that.”

The soft, young voice at Thomas’s elbow nearly startled. 

Chuck had crept forward on silent feet, close enough to comfort but not to touch. He had always been different from everyone else in the lab. Softer, kinder, less confident. He did the slop work no one else wanted, too afraid to break the equipment but even more afraid to be left behind. Thomas had always liked him, always felt protective in a brotherly way over the small boy who always said the wrong thing. Except, sometimes he didn’t. Chuck had a habit of saying whatever came to mind, and then grimacing in the aftermath. 

And yet, sometimes he surprised them all. One moment, Chuck was immature and gurgling an invented curse, and the next he was quiet and considering, seeing things no one else could and forcing their minds to ease with a few soft words. It was what he was doing for Thomas now.

“Do what?” Thomas choked around the tears lodged in his throat. They had yet to spill, and he had them back with sheer force of will. 

“Doubt it.” Chuck said. “We’ve all seen it. We watched you pull away from us and come here instead. And we were all okay with it. Because whatever this is, whatever you found here, it mattered. To you and to him. So don’t shuck it up and throw it all away when klunk hits the fan, okay?”

Thomas let out a strangled chuckle at the imitations of vulgarity, reaching forward to give Chuck’s shoulder a reassuring and thankful squeeze. Doubt and its companions were much harder to fight than Chuck made it seem, but he was right all the same. Thomas had never been a quitter, and allowing this fear to take hold was dangerously close to quitting the dream. 

“I thought it would feel different,” Thomas confessed, turning and eyeing the hospital bed as at last Newt’s screams quieted. Whatever sedative Teresa had given him seemed to be working, if fitfully. Newt still mumbled and groaned, still shook in his restraints, but there was significantly less violence to his movements. “I broke our biggest rule. Let the science lead us. Dr. Paige… I don’t even know how she didn’t see me and put a stop to it.”

“She did,” Teresa smiled sadly. “She knew, probably as soon as I did. She let you have this. We’re all fighting a losing battle here, Tom. Newt - he was the once piece of good she had left to give you.”

In hindsight, the absence of their ever present mentor should have alarmed Thomas long before now. Ava Paige had never been a relaxed teacher. She was often impatient, domineering, manipulative. What mattered was humanity and it’s survival, and how they achieved that mattered precious little to Dr. Paige. Thomas and Teresa had been fortunate to be her more promising students, to be granted leeway where others were persecuted. Her loyalties, it seemed, were not so thin as Thomas had believed.  

“Everyone knew?” He found himself asking. His friends nodded back at him. “And no one stopped me?”

Aris squinted at him quizzically. “You’re the leader, Thomas.” As if that were the whole answer.

“I never wanted to be the leader.”

“We know,” Aris and Chuck echoed.

Teresa murmured, “That’s why we followed you. And we still are. This - you need help. But it’s still up to you, Thomas. We’re still following your lead.” 

Thomas nodded, because he didn’t know what else to do in that moment. Teresa had been his best friend long enough for him to feel his need for her, but Thomas had never realized the size of his web. Chuck and Aris had been acquaintances he’d enjoyed, people he wanted around but had never considered an inability to live without. 

This, the four of them together, he couldn’t unpicture it now. They belonged with him. Whatever happened next, they would come if he called. He wouldn’t be alone.

“What do you want us to do, Tom?” Teresa urged gently. “He’ll wake up soon. I can’t slow it down for much longer.”

On queue, Newt let out a low, pained moan. He was already reanimating, the sedatives potency only offering a few moments reprieve from the pain and madness coursing through his body like a storm tide. 

What Thomas wanted and what was right went to war.

He was not ready to let go. There was still a stupid, stubborn echo of hope in his heart. A cure existed, because it had to. Thomas still believed that. Despite everything, he still believed in that balance. He still believed in science, even if he’d learned to also believe and trust in the wild and precious wantings of his heart. 

But he also believed in time, linear or circular or whatever people believed it to be, everyone ran on a clock. There was a timer set on every life. Some people got more, some people got less.  Time could be cheated. More could be created, pulled from the air and bound to a human host, but it came with a cost. And it wasn’t a cost Thomas was prepared to pay. It wasn’t one Newt could afford.

“We should -” The tears came to his eyes, and Thomas fought them back. When Newt woke, he wanted to be as pieced together as he could be. He couldn’t find his words. “Teresa?”

Teresa nodded, understanding without having to be told. “Okay,” she whispered, and got to work. 

The others bustled about the room, preparing the solution they would inject into Newt’s IV, flicking on and off various lights and machines, scribbling notes on charts and casting Thomas lingering looks of pity and uncertainty. 

Thomas ignored them all, tuned out the noise and the commotion, and sat at Newt’s bedside, tangling their fingers and trying to commit every pane and angle and color of Newt to memory.  _ Just in case _ , he told himself. 

Distantly, he heard the airvac doors open and close, felt the emptiness of space unoccupied, but he never turned. Thomas only stared, counting Newt’s breaths and watching the flutter of his eyelids. He was asleep and then awake in half a moment, eyes jolting wide and searching the room.

“Tommy?!”

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.” The words rushed out of Thomas. He flung his chair closer, leaning over until he was in Newt’s direct line of sight. 

Newt calmed, ever so slightly, when they locked eyes. Knowing passed between them. That way of not speaking told Newt everything he’d missed in the time elapsed since he’d gone to sleep and woken up something else. His fears had been brought to life, his nightmare made real, beaten back and creeping up again. Thomas could hardly bear the grief of it, but Newt only nodded as if he’d known this was the only course of action all along.

“It’s time then?”

Thomas bit his lip, hard enough to taste blood, and nodded.

“And what happens afterward?”

“I don’t know.”

A single tear slithered down Newt’s cheek. “Okay,” was all he said, before gritting his teeth against the pain and letting out a long crow of agony so ragged and sharp that Thomas felt it cut at the lining of his heart. There were no more delays, no time to slow or sedatives to slow the process.

Nearly everyone had left, save Teresa, but Thomas stayed. He knew he should make his exit, that it was improper and frowned upon, his being this close to a patient, despite everything that his friends had said, but when he even thought about standing and leaving the room -

“Please don’t leave, Tommy,” Newt choked out the words, a wild sort of panic in his eyes. Thomas could see the strain it put on Newt to keep his voice halfway level. Every muscle in his body was taut and straining like he hoped if he held still enough the disease would stop moving through him. “I don’t want to die alone.”

Thomas choked back a sob, tears burning his eyes. There were bindings across Newt’s wrists and ankles, tethering him to the bed so he couldn’t lurch forward, but Thomas weaved himself around them and gripped Newt’s hand in his anyway. 

“You’re not going to die,” he said and hated that he was lying. “I made you a promise, remember? You’re going to be the first. You’re going to make history and then you’re going to go home.”

“I think you should meet Lizzy. She’d like you.” 

The words hit Thomas like a blow. They were a goodbye. The tears he’d been holding back fell. Thomas could feel Teresa hovering behind him, waiting, but he didn’t acknowledge her.

He was sinking down into a void, hovering at the edge of darkness and despair. A trench loomed below him, and he was sliding further in by the moment. The strained scratches of Newt’s breathing and the beeping of the equipment sounded far away. 

Newt squeezed his hand a little tighter and offered him a small, tight smile, but the expression faded in an instant. It twisted into something feral and hungry, and then Newt was screaming. Not words or phrases but animal howls of rage, of pain, of desperation. He fought wildly against the restraints, his back arching and his limbs thrashing. 

All but his hand, still locked in Thomas’s own, which lay still, as if Thomas were a tether to the memories the rest of Newt’s body had forgotten.

Teresa surged forward, plunging the needle into the IV. They waited for several long seconds, Newt’s rising keens splintering their eardrums, until they finally halted. 

“Thank you,” Newt breathed, and he was Newt again, for the briefest of moments, before he wasn’t anything at all. 

Time slowed. Earth paused its slow rotation. Even the air paused; every particle in the universe stopping to mourn as the heart monitor flat-lined. Teresa reached around Thomas and flicked it off.

When Newt’s body went still, and all the light and wildness left his eyes, Thomas thought his heart might shatter in his chest. 

“Tom?” Teresa murmured, a soft question. 

Thomas didn’t answer. A hiccup of grief crested his lips, breaking like a wave into a true and honest sob. He didn’t want her comfort. The one thing he wanted was still and so, so quiet. He reached forward, fumbling with shaky hands, to remove all of Newt’s restraints. When the task was completed, and if one didn’t know any better they would think Newt was simply asleep, Thomas leaned forward.

Forcing back his sobs for a moment, he pressed a fleeting kiss against Newt’s forehead. “You weren’t the one I promised,” Thomas whispered, “but you were still the first.”

Not the first to survive the Flare. But Thomas’s first love. His first heartbreak. His first home.

Thomas climbed into the hospital bed for the second time in as many days and wrapped his arms around Newt’s still form. He was still warm, still soft and real and human. Newt still felt alive. Only Thomas had heard his heartbeat stop, and he was a man of science. He could not refute the stillness of a heart. 

He pressed his head into the crook of Newt’s neck and let his tears flow. Distantly, he heard Teresa exit the room. He was glad for it. He wanted to be alone with his sobs and the quiet, even if it was suffocating him.

He’d never quite grasped before what people meant when they said quiet could be a crushing sort of thing. But he did now, even if he didn’t want to. The true consequence of silence did not come from what it was, but what it lacked. It was the eternity of sounds that would never recur, the loss that could harrow and haunt and hold you captive for a lifetime. With Newt’s cries finally stopped, with his ragged breathing gone, with the machines endless beeping at last ceasing, the weight of silence settled over him, and Thomas understood. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for everyone who stuck out this story with me from beginning to end. I know I have never been the most consistent with updates, and I truly appreciate all of you who took the time to comment and let me know you were excited for upcoming chapters!  
> The story has come to an end. I loved writing this piece, heartbreaking as it may be. There may yet be an epilogue, but in truth, I sort of love the tragedy of this ending. If you are all desperate to know how Thomas recovers, where Minho and Lizzy end up, and all the other half endings of the story, I'll try to write a semi-coherent epilogue to explain everything the comes after Newt and Thomas's story ends.   
> Again, thank you to everyone for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my favorite works thus far, and I hope everyone's enjoying reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. Comments/kudos are always appreciated, and if anyone would like updates on upcoming chapters, feel free to message me on tumblr @cortland. As always, thank everyone so much for reading!


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